The LOG CABIN Community ON A LAKE

“It’s a beautiful little community, it really is,” Edward Gager said. “They have their own form of government, their own police force, fire department, and everything else. And the roads are now all paved. I am 82 now, but when I was a boy, most of those roads were sand roads.”

- STEVE SEARS

Gager speaks of the community of Medford Lakes. Log cabins and its 21 lakes were the key selling points when the community in the Pine Barrens area of Burlington County was founded in the late 1920s and marketed as a vacation getaway for wealthy folks from nearby Philadelphia and its suburbs. More than 90 years later, it still is, except it is a year-round vacation style of living for the town’s 4,100 residents as well.

Mary Ann Meehan is president of Medford Lakes Colony, a nonprofit organization in charge of organizing activities for the tiny community. “Medford Lakes is still a spot for vacationing,” she said. “Lakers like to say that living here is a year-round vacation. The town is comprised of some beautiful log cabins standing side by side with newer construction, and the historic commission works hard to keep the cabins as close to original construction as possible.”

Gager was born and raised in Medford, and is still nearby, residing on his family-owned Fox Chase Farm in Vincentown. Gager’s great uncle, Mancill Gager, who owned his own sawmill in Medford, built the first and most of the cedar wood log cabin homes in Medford Lakes.