Underground secrets

PALMER — It may not have rivaled the catacombs of Rome or even the 17th century underground tenements of Edinburgh, but for those on the first Palmer Underground Tour, the 1930s farm town has its own mystique.

Some 50 people navigated steep stairways and wandered creepy corridors to be part of the PaLmer Arts Council’s first tour of Palmer.

According to its brainchild, Palmer Arts Council President Bridgette Preston, the tour was designed to illuminate truths and fallacies of tales told of Palmer — all as it nears Halloween.

The tour was a conglomeration of “urban legends,” history and seasonal silliness that drew tremendous interest, Preston said. Tickets sold out in four hours and Saturday’s event had a waiting list with 120 names.

“We were pretty surprised how fast they went,” Preston said. “It really sparked people’s imagination in a big way. I think it’s the urban myth of the tunnels.”

Interest was so overwhelming, Palmer Arts Council is looking at a variety of tours in coming months, from the history of Palmer churches, to farms, homesteads, gardens and restaurants. And, Preston said, another Palmer Underground Tour.

“We’ll see how this one works out,” Preston said Saturday evening, midway through the tour. “Hopefully we’ll do some more.”

The tunnels are what inspired Mary Ann Cockle of Palmer to take the tour. She said she’s heard about the tunnels for the last four or five years she’s been here, and was curious to see for herself.

“I’m looking for the vampire muskrat,” Cockle said.

Saturday’s tour included early stops at Colony Inn, built as a dormatory for teachers in 1935, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Stations, built in 1949.

Janet Kincaid gave visitors to her 12-room inn a tour of her fabled, concrete basement two stories below her kitchen, which she admitted was dark and drippy when she first bought the inn, but not, she said, as mysterious as some claim.

“There’s really no tunnel,” Kincaid said.

Over at the UAF building, commonly called The Kremlin because of its boxy, white architecture, tour host and former employee Gidget Wensel, intimated there could be spirits afoot there.

“I’ll tell you that ghosts do exist down here,” Wensel said in the building’s basement. “I’ve heard them.”

Over at the former power house building, now used for arts’ council storage, tour guide and arts council secretary Howard Bess unveiled one of the legendary underground tunnels of Palmer.

“Now we descend into the bowels of the building,” Bess said, as he led a group of 25 into the depths of concrete, illuminated only with flashlights.

The tunnel system — utilidors that carried steam heat and utilities between the Colony buildings — were not, Bess stressed, ever intended for human use. That’s not to say there haven’t been those who have tried.

Patty (Scheibl) Whitt, who was born in Palmer to Colonist parents, said she’d heard about the tunnels for years.

“I always thought it was a fabrication — just there for steam,” Whitt said. But she said she’s long heard of teens traversing the tunnels, as has her daughter, Cindy Simon, who came on the tour as well.

But had Whitt or Simon ever ventured beneath the streets of Palmer?

“No, I never did,” said Whitt quickly. Nor did Simon, but she had friends who tried.

There was no venturing inside of the old Palmer morgue — it’s storage for the borough and wasn’t open for inspection, although it is for sale. Visible through the garage-door windows was the long, concrete ramp leading down to the storage area where once corpses were stored pending burial at spring thaw.

The tour didn’t confine itself to the macabre, instead straying into seasonal silliness. At Alaskana Books, housed in what was once the Colonists’ chicken hatcher, host Lorie Kirker and her staff conjured kin of Dracula in the basement to refute rumors of chicken attrocities, despite the building being used as a hatchery for only a year. It was subsequently used for less-avian purposes, like a barbershop and apartments.

Kirker said the basement has thousands of books in storage — among other things. “I don’t go down there unless we absolutely have to.”

Carol Horner was more than happy to take people through an old elevator shaft to the basement of her bungalow a few blocks away.

Built in 1947 and raised for a basement in 1951, she’s redecorated it in contemporary landfill — an eclectic collection of treasures she’s saved from the bulldozer. Her homemade fruit spirits helped warm the group as they continued on their way.

Lack of true tunnels didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of Eric Hale, a 2009 Palmer High graduate, who moved here from Charlottesville, Va.

Hale said that while his native town had a storied history, it concentrated on 200 to 300 years ago. This tour harkens to the eras of his grandparents and parents.

“It’s pretty cool to see the history of it,” Hale said. “I thought it would be interesting.”

The trip under Non-Essentials was another walk back in time. The basement was once a feed store, and signs for different types of feed still line the walls. But the star beneath the stairs was the “Bailey Piano,” a grand piano brought to Palmer by a man seeking to keep his new wife content, which subsequently was housed at the old central school, a church and other locations, before being stored at the store.

The basement of another downtown business, Cover Ups, yielded a collection too odd to be macabre — hundreds of dolls, some in pieces, stored there for Valley Recycling Center pending their own sort of rebirth.

The three-hour walk, warmed by a chocolate concoction from the Hot Hot Chocolate Shoppe, seemed to keep the attention of children and adults alike, despite a lack of vampire muskrats or escape tunnels.

Mark Hoffman, treasurer of Palmer Arts Council, said he was pleased with the tour’s success as it wound to a close.

“It obviously had interest,” Hoffman said. “It was one of those things — we tapped into a need.”

To keep abreast of upcoming tours by the council, visit www.thepalmerartscouncil.org.