Since you have decided to build a vacation home, your first problem is to find a location. The whole family will have something to say about this—half the fun of building a cabin or beach house is the planning of various details in family councils. No doubt, by the time you discover the region in which you would like to build, friends will have told you many of the important things to look for. However, here are a number that should help you.
If it is to be a summer vacation home and you have a car, the distance from home isn’t so important, because the Pacific Coast’s network of fine roads offers easy access to almost every area. On the other hand, if you are going to be a “week-ender,” don’t choose a site too far away. It isn’t fun to spend most of your weekend traveling to and from the cabin, and your friends will avoid you—but perhaps that’s your intention!
Cost of construction is important. It’s all very well to build a place out in the wilds, but the farther you go from civilization the more it costs to transport men and materials to your cabin site.
Watch the Distance
With the whole Pacific Coast to choose from it shouldn’t be too hard to find an area that suits all the family. You will be smart to pick a spot not more than an easy day’s drive from home. If it is only a few hours away, so much the better. Within less than one day’s drive from most points on the Pacific Coast you can lose yourself in a paradise of forests, lakes and mountains, or stand on the ocean shore and hear the breakers boom.
Naturally, you’ll want to invest most of your money in the cabin or beach house itself. That being the case the best place to go for low-cost mountain cabin sites is the United States Forest Service, which controls millions of acres of the finest timber and mountain country in the world. Beach property, on the other hand, is largely a commercial proposition, and you’ll more than likely have to consult your real estate dealer.
The National Forests offer cabin sites to suit every taste and every purse. However, certain areas are not open to settlement, and all cabins must conform to standards set by the Forest Service. You can’t buy the land, but you can occupy it under Special Use Permit. You get low cost, freedom from crowding and assurance that the area will not be ruined by commercialization.
The Forest Service opens new tracts for summer cabin sites when those opened in previous years are filled. Cabins are not crowded together as they are in some commercial tracts.
Many Sites Available
There are eighteen National Forests in California alone and dozens of others in the western states offering a diversity of climate and natural conditions. Of course, not all of the forests are available for cabin sites, but there is a large group from which to select. Most of the tracts available in National Forests are in groups of from six to one hundred lots or more, each lot averaging about ⅓ acre, depending upon topography and cover.