For almost 100 years, a wooded property on Geneva's east side has been home to a gated community of tiny Swedish cottages. 

On Oct. 17 and 18, the public will have a chance to step through those gates.

Prior to September, my only experience with the cottages had been peeking at them through the fence along the bike path. But during a recent tour, several of the residents provided an inside look at a remarkable piece of local history.

Once inside, it quickly feels as though you’ve left the Chicago suburbs. You’ll find mulched paths winding between dozens of little wooden cottages dotting the forested property. Most of the structures, which are no larger than 600 square feet (aside from one or two exceptions), were built during the Great Depression. 

A creek runs through the landscape, crossable via a handful of footbridges. Residents say they often spot deer in the backyards. It’s also not unheard of to glimpse a mink along the water or a fox patrolling the grounds at night. One cottage owner said they’ve identified more than 50 kinds of mushrooms on the forest floor.

"I have friends that come over here and they're like, 'I don't even feel like I'm in Geneva,'" said Alicia Hines, who co-chairs the park's annual Historic Cottage Walk.

That’s all by design, beginning nearly 100 years ago.

The story starts in 1911 in Evanston. That June, Chicago-area lodges of the Independent Order of Good Templars held a Swedish Midsummer celebration at Evanston's Linden Park. The Good Templars are a temperance organization, meaning their members do not drink, and they called the party Svenskarnas Dag, or "Swedes' Day."

Midsummer is one of Sweden’s biggest holidays. The festival offered a way for immigrant families to hold onto their old traditions in their new home.

The event was a hit. The celebration moved to Ravinia Park in 1913, and by 1924 it was drawing roughly 10,000 people. As it grew in popularity, the organizers (who had been renting the site) began looking for a more permanent solution. 

They found their spot on 66 acres of farmland along the Fox River on Geneva's east side. According to today’s members, the property at the time was situated next to the Chicago Aurora and Elgin railroad, which ran where the bike path now runs along the edge of the park. The line once had its own stop at Eastside Drive, called Good Templar Park.

After the group bought the land in 1924, hundreds of members started spending their weekends turning it into a park by hand. The volunteers built picnic tables, a circular stage, and refreshment stands. 

Good Templar Park officially opened May 31, 1925, and held its first Swedish Day that June. The celebration, which members say is the second-oldest midsummer festival in the country, has been held there ever since.

It wasn’t reasonable for the volunteers building the park to commute back to Chicago every night, so at first they tent camped. No doubt growing weary of battling wet weather, they eventually built wooden platforms, and pitched the tents on top.

Around 1933, those platforms started transforming into small seasonal cottages. Members call them stugas, Swedish for "little houses." Built from whatever materials people could get their hands on at the time, most went up during the Depression. One cottage even had 13 different sizes of windows.

"Swedish people use everything and any scrap that they have," Hines said.

The cottage community eventually spread across the creek in the early 1940s. In all, members built 58 cottages over the years, and about 48 stand today.

Many of the original families came from Andersonville, Chicago's historic Swedish neighborhood. Women and kids spent the summer at the park while the men worked in the city during the week and visited via the train on weekends. At its peak, up to 400 kids stayed on the grounds each summer.

Back then, a tiny general store would open for about an hour a day. A single payphone, equipped with outdoor bells, was available for the whole community. According to Holtz, one longtime member, now in her 80s, remembers answering that phone as a little girl. 

Sometimes the calls came from Sweden, in a language she didn't speak. The payphone remained until 2002.

Much of the park still looks the way it did nearly a century ago.

"A lot of these are in some form of their original structure, with maybe additions, maybe slight changes, but they're still usually sitting on the same spot," said Kevin Kloubec, who’s served as Cottage Association President for the past 10 years.

Pam Gustafson's cottage is a good example. Her husband's grandfather built it during the Depression, modeled after his grandfather's house in Sweden. The adults slept downstairs, and the kids crammed into an attic about three-and-a-half feet high.

Mollie Johanson came to the park by a different route. She grew up five minutes away, and her mother always wondered about "those cottages." She once told Mollie's brother that if he ever became a famous baseball player, he'd have to buy her one. 

The baseball stardom didn’t pan out, but the family was ready when a few cottages went up for sale two years ago.

Today, Johansson’s stuga is filled with family heirlooms, some from her Swedish ancestors.

The Good Templars still own the land, and members own the cottages. The property, which is zoned as a campground, is open May 1 through Oct. 31. 

Every cottage has access to Geneva water and electricity, but there's no natural gas and no sewer. Residents use incinerating toilets, camper toilets, or the shared bathhouse. Only a couple of open lots remain; new cottages must be under 600 square feet in size.

You don't have to be Swedish to belong, and you don't have to own a cottage. Members are expected to put in volunteer hours, and they gather monthly for fika (coffee, pastries, and conversation) in the Community House, which was built in 1949.

"Everybody here is a leader," said Joy Holtz, who co-chairs the cottage walk with Hines. "It is truly a community-run organization."

Johansson says the place strikes an unusual balance. 

"People don't just come and knock on your door," she said. "You get to have quiet time here, but you also get to have community time here."

Proceeds from public events pay for maintaining the property, and one of the community’s biggest annual events is coming up. Cottages in the Woods runs Oct. 17 and 18 from 10AM to 4PM, featuring more than 30 artisans and vendors at 20 of the historic stugas across the grounds. 

"It is a magical transformation," Holtz said. "We have fairies and gnomes. Some cottage owners even sell some of their own things."

You should probably arrive hungry. The Lingonberry Cafe in the Community House will serve kladdkaka (a dense, gooey Swedish chocolate cake), pumpkin mousse, and lingonberry cake. There will also be a homemade bake sale and food trucks on site. 

For the kids, there will be a scavenger hunt and craft projects. In good weather, the event tends to draw up to 3,000 people over the weekend.

Admission is $10 for adults and free for kids 12 and under. Free parking is available at 528 Eastside Drive. There’s an accessible entrance on the north side for visitors who can't easily manage the creek crossing.

If you miss it, the park will open to the public again next June for the Midsummer Festival and Historic Cottage Walks.

Learn more at GoodTemplarPark.org or on the Cottages in the Woods Facebook page.

Please feel free to reach out to [email protected] with questions or comments.

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