[3] A 2014 review of Library of Congress records confirmed the existence of a long forgotten sketch for part of Palmer Park by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.

The park includes a historic log cabin, a public disc golf course, tennis courts, hiking and biking trails and a large pond known as Lake Frances.

Senator Thomas Witherell Palmer donated 140-acre (57 ha) for a city park in 1893, on the condition that the virgin forest be preserved.

[3] During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Palmer Park Citizens Action Council staged festivals, ran a CB radio patrol, and received several park-improvement grants.

[3][8] On June 24, 2012, the group partnered with the City of Detroit to open the Palmer Log Cabin to the public as part of a fundraiser to restore the structure.

Established in 1927, Palmer Park Golf Course was home turf for many notable Detroit residents including Motown performers Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Four Tops, and boxer Joe Louis.

[6] The Merrill Fountain was designed by the architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings and originally stood in front of the old Detroit Opera House in Campus Martius Park.

[4][14][15] As automobile traffic increased in downtown Detroit, the city's elders decided to move the fountain to the Merrill Plaissance, at the far southern boundary of Palmer Park, in 1926.

At the top of the fountain is an arch carved into cattails and water lilies over a niche containing a marble turtle straddled by two stylized fish.

The balusters are decorated with glyphs, four lion heads, and two gargoyles at the huge end posts; all of which spout water into the clover-shaped pool.

[19] In 1911, a writer for a horse-breeding gazette recalled that “there was no formality” at Log Cabin feasts; “Dinner,” he wrote, “was announced with an old tin horn.” Whenever a fellow Senator visited, Palmer asked him to plant a tree, from which he hung a brass plaque engraved with his name.

It stayed open until 1979, when the city gave its artifacts to the Detroit Historical Society for safekeeping and closed the Log Cabin to the public.

[9] On June 24, 2012, the group People for Palmer Park partnered with the City of Detroit to open the cabin to the public for only the second time since 1979,[3] as part of a fundraiser to restore the building's roof.

Their last use was as compost bins, where the city stored wood chips and manure from the nearby Detroit Mounted Police Station in Palmer Park.