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Ed and Dan Petersen were worthy builders of many enduring cabins standing 80 years later. The group of Twin Cities Masons who searched out and bought the three legal plats making up Cinosam found modest success in building their idea of "A Summer Colony for Masons and Eastern Stars." But with the notable early exception of Club Secretary Minnie Paine, they were men of ideas, money & influence.
What they were not was skilled with hammer and nails, levels, squares and planes. They needed good carpenters to actually construct the early summer homes for Masons and their families.
The area, populated mainly by Jack Pines, offered limited choices. But very luckily two brothers, hunter-trapper-fishing guides Ed and Dan Petersen, were skilled carpenters. They soon became the prime builders of early Cinosam.
While the 1920s were prosperous for many, the concept of summer homes owned by individuals had been largely limited to the rich before World War I. And the difficulty of travel on roads such as "Minnesota Scenic Highway 19" (now Minn 371) made Cinosam a rather remote place for Masons to consider building a "cottage." So the money folks were willing to invest was not great.
A lot and cabin could be had for $800 or so. And along Bester, Donaldson and Paine Avenue particularly, Minnie and her friends and summertime neighbors of the mid 1920s built simpler, rustic cabins after the style rich easterners had used before WWI. Locally milled lumber was inexpensive and sound.
So the Petersen brothers could earn a living with their considerable skills. But before they could apply them, they had to clear space. Cabin lots were thick with Jack Pines, which grew taller, competing for light, and dying when out-shadowed by others. A common technique was to fell them with an ax or hatchet. Sawn parallel to the earth, an "old pine stump" might support a cabin corner reliably for half a century.
De-limbed, the " Jacks" were buck-sawed for firewood in an X-shaped stand. Their debris not infrequently was simply tromped in the greenery and enriched the soil. First they built their own nine-foot ladders of Jack Pine saplings, splitting the steps to half-thickness, but using the dried, de-barked uprights whole.
Using hand saws, and brace-and-bit, they adapted various floor plans according to the wishes of each buyer. Often the basic cabin was a 20-foot square with three rooms: A combined living, dining and kitchen of 10x20 feet, and two bedrooms of 10x10 each. According to the owner's wishes, Ed or Dan placed a front and back door, and, usually eight openings for inward-hinged cottage windows. This completed the plan, which might be drawn on a board, two or three sheets of ordinary paper, or not drawn at all.
Eighteen concrete blocks laid flat-side-down on the smoothed sugar sand made the complete "foundation."
The roof was of similar, wide-spaced 2x4 construction, using wider "ship-lap" boards which were topped with three-tab granular-coated shingles, often green. The roof peak, often oriented a north-south, was a straight line. The horizontal 2x4 stringers at ceiling level were left open to the roof, so the rooms were without a ceiling. It was a cool arrangement for summer and allowed kerosene-lamp smoke to rise to the roof.
A brick chimney, built on a 2x4 platform high on the "T" junction of the eight-foot high central interior walls, served an inexpensive "tin stove" to take the chill from rainy mornings, burn waste paper, or easily heat (or overheat) the un-insulated three rooms. A metal heat reflector a few inches from the wall, and decoratively-painted metal-covered "stove board" on the floor protected against radiated heat and any stray coals which fell.
Outside, simple, small porches of tongue-and-groove fir, front and back, were often painted green, like the window trim. A couple of early cabins on what became North Paine Avenue sported large, screened-in porches. White oil- based paint on cabin siding and under the open eves completed the square buildings. They were generally left unpainted inside.
Furnishings were often home-built, mixed with leftovers and castoffs: Beds made of small Birch trees, tables of construction-lumber leftovers with old curtains or cloth tacked at the top or hung on a small rod; similar window curtains, old kitchen chairs, a four-burner-wide gas stove, a wood ice box no longer needed at the owner's winter home-Adirondack lawn chairs used indoors-such were the "furnishings and appliances."
Twice weekly, an ice man delivered 25 & 50 lb. blocks, cut from the lakes. By the latter 1940s, "the man of the house," and perhaps his children, replaced ice delivery with trips to dig in the sawdust of the Hwy. 371 log Ice Crib. This was near the former site of the second Cinosam Store. And Dick Parks Gas Company has for many decades supplied bottled gas.
Until early in the Depression, kerosene lamps provided the main source of light. Initially, the electric company demanded owners pay not only for the electricity they used, but for their proportion of the lines which had to be installed to bring 110 volts to Cinosam. The last requirement was dropped before long, and cabins enjoyed rudimentary electric lights. Commonly, a 20x20 foot cabin might have four electric sources. These were lamps wired a foot or so down from the open 2x4s of the "ceiling," two in the living area and one in each of two bedrooms. These were "finished" with decorated square or rectangular parchment lamp shades. If the owner wanted to plug in some other device, he removed the bulb, and screwed in a two-prong receptacle temporarily replacing the bulb. Then a pressing iron or some other device could be plugged into the receptacle. Water came from a red pitcher pump at the right edge of the single, all-purpose, "kitchen" sink. These were the indoor utilities.
The other utility was The Outhouse. "Two holers" were the standard well behind every cabin and built to match its siding and color. The "necessary" was moved every few years, when a new hole had to be dug perhaps 6 or 8 feet deep, and the old hole covered over with sand.
All in all it was a low cost and decidedly rustic appearance which resulted-and created the collective character of Cinosam cabins. Nor did such rusticity end with the cottages and their contents. Outdoor "furniture" was built of whatever was available, notably including living Jack Pines for "legs" on benches, community fish-cleaning tables, make-shift stands for outboard motors (like the "Waterwich,") hammocks and similar summertime needs.
Such was a typical Cinosam cabin as created by Masons and the Petersen brothers.
(Two Petersen daughters still live here, one in a Cinosam home built by the worthy carpenters.)
If you have information or photos of early Cinosam, you are urged to contact Fred Paine via the "contact us" item on this website, or (summers) at 20687 Bester Ave..
Art caption: A 20x20 foot cabin. Note the cement block foundation, porch, and chimney cap to keep out winter's squirrels open eve, and inward-swinging multi-pane windows.
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