Mormon Station State Park

Mormon Station State Park

Mormon Station State Park Bret Morgan

Mormon Station State Park

Mormon Station State Park
1947, Edward S. Parsons. 2295 Main St.

This one-story log cabin surrounded by a wood stockade is a mid-twentieth-century replica of the original cabin and stockade built in 1851 as a trading station. The original complex with its assemblage of additions and alterations burned down in 1910. In 1947 the state legislature appropriated money to reconstruct the cabin to promote Genoa's early history. Parsons, at the time the State Highway Department's architect, used historic photographs and archaeological findings to reconstruct the cabin as accurately as possible and to site it properly on its lot. Logs cut near Genoa recreated the rectangular, gabled central mass and the shed-roofed addition. A central stone chimney rises above the roof ridge. The excellent condition of the building and its surrounding two-and-one-half-acre park gives the complex an overrestored feeling that contrasts with the more rustic character of some of the older buildings nearby.

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