My round log cabin, Sunset Lodge, has always been in my family. It was built by my grandfather, Bruce Ward, founder of the Ward Log Home Company in Maine. Sunset Lodge is an original Ward Cedar Log Home and is on The National Register of Historic Places. My mother, Bruce Ward's daughter, Eleanor Ward Nichols, and I worked to have Sunset Lodge accepted on the Register in 1994. It was recognized because my grandfather was the founder of the modern log home industry and the cabin is an example of recreational homes of the times it was built.
My mother brought my two sisters and me to the cabin on Madawaska Lake every summer, even after the family moved to Rhode Island. We have many good memories of playing in the lake and watching the beautiful sunsets across the lake. As years went by, my sisters and I brought our children and grandchildren to Madawaska Lake to enjoy the peacefulness and to be restored. Five generations have now enjoyed summers at Sunset Lodge.
My mother called Sunset Lodge her "happy place" and she would look down from her sleeping area in the loft in the mornings, usually with her hair in curlers and a bonnet over the curlers and ask, "Is everybody happy?". She kept so many stories about her father and his accomplishments foremost in our memories of times at the camp that we all know how he had a patent on the tongue and groove method of wood joinery and how he started his career in the log home industry as a lumberman in the woods of northern Maine. The State of Maine proclaimed February 12th, 1989, as Bruce Ward Day.
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Cabin Porn: Inside
