A Cozy Cabin in the Cozy Camp

[1/13/2016 update] The location of this photograph was originally identified as the Cozy Camp (successor to Chester's Camp), but now it seems more likely to be The Pantry, a tourist stop on the northeast corner of S.R. 51 and E. 73rd Ave. owned by Cecil and Ruby Tonagel. I have two reasons for changing the identification:

1. We now have photos of the Tonagel cabins, and they look exactly like the one pictured here. (The Cozy Camp cabins may have looked the same, but at present we don't know how they looked).
2. The person who donated the Tonagel photos lived at The Pantry and directly remembers Dacre Nelson staying in a cabin there, while the donor of the photo below had his information at second hand (and his description of the cabin where Dacre stayed is not inconsistent with what we know of the Tonagel cabins).

(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of a friend.

This is Dacre Nelson at The Pantry Cozy Camp in 1937. Dacre and his brother had come up from Missouri looking for work. They stayed in these rough accommodations for a while.

The owner of the original photo tells me that the cabins were "octagon shaped with each side about seven feet long, not real roomy. They had a heat source but I'm not sure if it was wood, oil, kerosene or what. The heaters were also for cooking. I think the bathrooms were in another building that was shared."

Dacre went back to Missouri in 1938 and stayed there long enough to be married. Soon he and his wife, Dorothy, returned to this area, first renting an apartment in the Ainsworth general-store building, then moving to Lake Street in Hobart, where the 1940 census found them.