Abe Nelson was born in Norway and came to the United States at the age of four. There are two building at White Pine Village devoted to the collections of Abe Nelson.

The lumber camp style building houses his lumbering collection. A building of this nature (board and batter construction) was probably used as barracks or a bunkhouse. Rows of wooden bunk beds lined the walls.

The generation that cut the great forests of Michigan must have been rugged individuals for the days were long, work was hard, and wages were meager.

Lumbering in Mason County began with a primitive mill on the shore of Pere Marquette Lake. The mill was built by Baird and Bean in the late 1840’s and leased for many years by Charles Mears. This region was natural for a lumbering industry. The Pere Marquette River and lake as well as Lake Michigan provided excellent means of transportation of logs and finished lumber. The lumbering era was in full swing by the 1870’s with little thought of the future with the seemingly endless supply of trees. By 1910, this era was coming to an end as the supply of timber was depleted and logs were imported to meet the needs of the area.

Abe Nelson donated many of the items in this museum from a similar museum he owned and allowed school children to tour in Ludington personally telling them of stories he recalled of life in the lumber camps. His personal hero was Paul Bunyan and he made items for the museum to appear oversized to help capture the imaginations of young and old.