Q: There’s a cluster of miniature log cabins on Carpenter Road just south of the I-94 overpass. Who built them, and do people still live in them?
A. The three cabins and two houses share a surprisingly tranquil eighteen-acre setting bordered by a pair of ponds. David and Linda Jenkins live in one of the houses (it had been a fourth cabin, but it grew) and lease the rest.
David’s father cleared the land and built all the structures back in 1946. He had worked at the Willow Run bomber plant during the war but was laid off from the Kaiser-Fraser car factory that took over the complex. At the time, Carpenter Road was the main north-south highway in the area; the senior Jenkins, who loved to hunt and fish up north, got the idea for the cabins from those he had seen in the Lewiston area. They are indeed miniature, at 520 square feet, and are usually leased to singles. One tenant stayed eighteen years, and several have returned after time spent out of the area.
At the end of his life the senior Jenkins predicted that his son wouldn’t want more than five years of the responsibility for this lovely, unique corner of the world. That was in 1975.
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