If you build it…

Fill in the blank. 

You couldnt keep the yurts empty if you wanted to, said Justin Parker, ranger supervisor at Fort Stevens State Park in Hammond. Theyre filled year-round.

Rangers hope it will be the same way with the 10 new cabins under construction at the park.

If all goes according to plan, the cabins should be ready this spring, but no official opening date has been set. 

This is the critical stretch of weeks, said Park Manager Mike Stein on Tuesday.

He said the cabins will reach a point when their roofs are in place and their interiors are dry and at that crucial time, park crews can go inside and finish everything else.

The cabins came to the park in kits constructed by inmates through the Oregon Corrections Enterprises (OCE)?work programs. The goal of the OCE is to give inmates full-time work or on-the-job training. 

For the park, it means a relatively quick construction time. Work on the cabins started in November and crews were beginning to lay down the metal roofing Tuesday. 

Able to sleep five adults comfortably, the cabins will be equipped with electricity and running water and will have a front porch and three rooms: a bathroom, a back bedroom and a front room. 

People come to the park year-round and in all sorts of weather. The yurts already house campers who want to camp in the winter and the wet. The cabins will likely be used by the same sort of crowd, Stein said.

But they arent just for the people who like to camp in the middle of a storm.

There are a lot of people who cant invest in camping equipment, Stein said. Also, parents with young kids, their pace of life is a little more frantic. Theyll have an opportunity to come down here when otherwise maybe they wouldnt.

With a cabin, all a family would have to do is pack food, clothes and bedding and theyd be ready to go. 

Similar cabins have already passed the rain test at Cape Lookout State Park and Stein is confident theyll be able to withstand the wet weather here too. 

Instead of drastically changing the landscape to accommodate the cabins, the park worked to situate the cabins in existing open spaces among a stand of mature spruce on a former tent-camping loop.

We hand-excavated a lot of stuff, Stein said. Weve gone to great lengths to protect the root structures of the trees.

This approach has worked to the parks advantage.

It saved some construction time, Stein said, since the park rangers were able to identify problem places before the building crews came in, and it kept an interesting landscape intact.

The cabins will go for $76 during the summer season (May-Sept.) and for $56 during the Discovery Season (Oct.-April). For updated information after Feb.1, call 1-800-551-6949.