Editor’s note: This is the last of three installments featuring stories about growing up in the Roberts family, as told to their granddaughter for a Good Old Days article and submitted to the Des Moines Historical Society. Parts one and two appeared in the Times/News earlier this year.

After moving to Saltwater Grove in approximately 1931, where he built the family home (still used today by the assistant ranger at Salt Water Park) J. Haydn Roberts built six cabins.

The cabins, in three sets of two one-room buildings connected by a carport, rented for $5-6 a week.

They had wood stoves, one light, a table with a small kitchen area in the front corner with a sink, a cupboard with curtain “doors,” two homemade four-poster beds in a back curtained-off area, unfinished walls, and an air cooler -- a box with screening on an outside wall to let in cool air.

There was a community bath and shower close by.

Visitors needed to bring their own bedding, dishes, food, etc.

During the Depression, when there was a shortage of housing, the cabins were improved. They were insulated, walls finished, ice boxes added, and a bathroom for each two units was added where the carport was located.

There were also six platform tents. They had wood floors, wood sides about three feet high and wood doors. The rest was covered with canvas.

Each was outfitted with a stove, kitchen cupboard, sink, one light, and two double beds that were curtained off.

Rowboats were rented for 25 cents. They were stored under the porch on rollers.

The Roberts boys would pull one out onto a trailer with a very long wood tongue and take it to the water. The tide always seemed to be low and the renters would walk along the tongue to get in the boat so they didn’t have to get their feet wet.

In the winter everything, such as tent canvases and mattresses, were stored in a house occupied by Haydn’s brother, Lewis.

When the property was sold to the state in 1950, the house was moved up the hill where it still stands today.

During the move, the house was put on large wheels and towed down on the tide flats to get around the creek.

But when it was most of the way up the beach, it got bogged down in the sand and the tide was coming in. Lee stayed in the house that night, surrounded by water, but the water wasn’t deep enough to get in the house.

The next day a bulldozer and truck successfully pulled the house off the beach and up the hill, as all watched out for low tree limbs and electrical lines.

Today, even though our family does not own a resort on the beach, we still enjoy beach combing, boating and swimming as much as our family did 65 years ago.

This information was gathered in October 1992 from interviews with Lee and Lois Roberts and Louise Roberts (Mrs. Forrest Roberts) by Renee West, granddaughter of Forrest J. Roberts and great-granddaughter of J. Haydn Roberts, with help from her mom, Gail (Roberts) West.

In loving memory of J. Haydn, Frieda M, Haydn G., Forest J. Roberts and Lee Roberts.