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📸 Credit: Good Templar Park on Facebook
Good Templar Park in Geneva is hosting two separate tours during the same weekend as Swedish Days, giving visitors a chance to check two boxes in one outing.
The Historic Cottage Walk and the Viking Ship Open Day both run Saturday, June 27, and Sunday, June 28 — and both events come with more than a century of local history behind them.
Here's what to know:
Small-group cottage tours: Park members and cottage owners lead walkthroughs of six of the property's stugor (Swedish for “cabin”), sharing the park's history along the way. Tours run 10AM-4PM both days, and guests can pick up Swedish baked goods or grab a cold drink at the Community House.
Tickets at the gate: Cottage Walk admission is $10, with kids 12 and under free. Parking is free.
A 19th-century ship on display: The park's Viking ship, built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, gets docent-led tours roughly every 15 minutes, with the last one starting at 3:45PM.
Admission for the ship: Adults pay $7, teens 13-17 pay $4, and kids 12 and under get in free — cash or card at the door, no advance tickets needed.
Good Templar Park and the cottages
The park opened in 1925 as a campground, where members first stayed in large tents before shifting to platform dwellings for longer visits. Around 1933, those gave way to the permanent stugas that still stand today.
The brick Community House went up in 1949 on the site of an older barn-style building, the same year a larger restroom and shower facility was added. The campground later expanded across the creek in the early 1940s, adding 15 more structures and bringing the park's total to 58 cottages, all owned by members of the IOGT (International Organization of Good Templars).
The nonprofit running the ship tours, Friends of the Viking Ship, is also working toward a bigger goal of securing a permanent, climate-controlled museum to house the historic vessel.
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