Photo Credit: Paul Crosby Photography
Nestled into a hillside in Whitetail Woods Regional Park, a new park within the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area, are three new camper cabins in a pine forest. Throughout the Midwest’s state and regional parks, camper cabins are a highly sought-after amenity. Park enthusiasts and campers who like sleeping overnight in a secure, solid structure, yet are willing to bring along their own essentials (linens, water, cooking stove), find these cabins perfect for “roughing it.”
Among the camper-cabin, jet-setting crowd, seeking out new parks and new experiences is paramount. This is why, in part, the new cabins are wildly popular. In creating the first three structures on 450 wooded acres (the first phase of a long-term master plan), the department set out to design and construct cabins that will build on the success of previous projects, and yet offer something completely unique.
Built on concrete piers to minimize their impact on the surrounding parkland, the cabins—which were designed in an open, airy, modern style—hover 14 to 16 feet above grade. A riff on the idea of a treehouse, these cabins instead are “houses in the trees” accessible via an on-grade ramp.