How a Backyard Sauna Became a Cooperative—and Why That Part Matters
An early and earnest spark in North America's thermic bathing revival
I started building my first mobile sauna in the fall of 2012, tucked into the alley behind a maker space in South Minneapolis called The Hack Factory. At the time, I had no master plan—just a stubborn curiosity about heat, craft, and what might happen if you took sauna out of private basements and placed it back into shared life.
The build itself was slow. Painfully slow.
It took nearly two years to finish.
I was learning everything as I went: framing, insulation, ventilation, wood choice, stove dynamics—often one mistake at a time. The Hack Factory community kept me moving forward, as did tiny house builder Jim Wilkinson and Glenn Auerbach of Saunatimes, who patiently explained the difference between “hot” and good heat, and why trim details actually matter more than beginners think.
By Christmas of 2014, the sauna was finally fired up and road-ready. I named it The Firehouse.
That winter, I started inviting family, friends, and neighbors to sauna—mostly in backyards around South Minneapolis. It didn’t take long for something unexpected to happen. People didn’t just come to sweat. They lingered. They talked. They brought friends. They started asking when the next session would be.
Almost without realizing it, I had started a club. We called it the 612 Sauna Society.
Rolling a Tiny House Through the City
The Firehouse was part sauna, part tiny house—with a loft that made it tall enough to cause real logistical problems. Every move required planning routes around low wires and bridges. I’d skate ahead on rollerblades with a fishing pole duct-taped to a stick, tapping wires to see if we’d clear them. The honks were constant. The looks were priceless.
From 2013 to 2016, I hosted thousands of guests—mostly in backyards, driveways, and borrowed lots. A collaboration with The Musicant Group brought the sauna into more visible public residencies, including work with Little Box Sauna that helped push the project further into the city’s imagination.
What started as a scrappy, personal experiment was becoming a shared ritual space.
And that’s when the real question emerged.
Why a Cooperative?
By 2016, it was clear the 612 Sauna Society had outgrown the idea of being “my project.”
More importantly, I didn’t want it to stay mine.
Around this time, I was deeply influenced by my studies with the Orphan Wisdom School—work that asks a hard, often uncomfortable question:
What does it actually take to build real culture?
Not branding.
Not trends.
Not one charismatic founder.
Culture—real culture—is built through shared responsibility, ritual continuity, and structures that can outlive any single person. Traditions don’t survive because they’re cool; they survive because communities agree to carry them together.
In North America, we’re exceptionally good at creating experiences. We’re far less practiced at creating containers that protect meaning over time.
The cooperative model offered something rare and necessary:
Shared ownership instead of private control
Stewardship instead of scale-at-all-costs growth
Governance as a cultural practice, not a bureaucratic inconvenience
Making the 612 Sauna Society a cooperative was a conscious act of resistance against the idea that everything meaningful must eventually become a brand, a product, or a personality-driven enterprise.
It was an experiment in whether we could build a modern tradition—one rooted in thermic bathing, hospitality, and care for the nervous system—using contemporary tools without losing depth.
From Club to Cooperative
To do this right, I teamed up with Sauna Society pal and Orphan Wisdom mentor Margie Weaver. Together, we completed the City of Minneapolis’s first Cooperative Technical Assistance Program (CTAP) for startup co-ops in 2016. With guidance from Tom Pierson and others, we learned how to translate shared values into legal and operational reality.
Later that year, Teke O’Reilly led a Kickstarter campaign that raised $33,810 to build a new mobile sauna the cooperative could operate publicly. Teke—an exceptional writer and longtime thermic bathing enthusiast—also produced a launch video that beautifully captured what the project had become: not a business pitch, but an invitation into a living culture.
Construction on the new sauna began in November 2016, led by Glenn Auerbach and a rotating crew of volunteers who endured two months of brutal winter weather. Architect Michael Gordon offered critical guidance, and Rodney Buhrsmith—later the cooperative’s first Board President—was instrumental in sourcing materials and leadership.
The sauna was named The Forge, a nod to both heat and collective making.
A Public Debut—and Something Bigger
In January 2017, The Forge debuted during a month-long residency at Surly Brewing. The launch was celebrated widely, with coverage that extended beyond sauna circles and into the broader cultural conversation.
Forbes even described me—somewhat to my embarrassment—as a “Pied Piper of sauna enthusiasm.” (I’m still considering that for a business card.)
But the moment that mattered most wasn’t the press. It was the governance.
In April 2017, Teke O’Reilly, Glenn Auerbach, Margie Weaver, Max Musicant, Rodney Buhrsmith, and I became the Founding Board of Directors of the 612 Sauna Society Cooperative. A plaque listing all founding members was installed inside The Forge during its first season at the Loppet Trailhead—a quiet but intentional marker of collective authorship.
From that point on, the sauna no longer belonged to an individual.
It belonged to a community—and to a future.
What We Actually Built
Together, we helped spark a thermic bathing revival in the Twin Cities—one that’s since been recognized by Vogue, The Guardian, and others. But more importantly, we built something durable:
A living example of how ancient practices can be re-rooted in modern life without being flattened into novelty.
A structure that allows people to host meaningful sauna sessions for their neighbors—not as performers, but as stewards.
A cooperative that treats heat not as entertainment, but as medicine, ritual, and social glue.
That’s the part I’m most proud of.
See you on the bench,
– JP
Further Reading
For a deeper historical account, see Garrett Conover’s Sauna Magic, which includes a beautifully written and photographed chapter documenting the founding of the nation’s first sauna cooperative, based on extensive interviews with early members and volunteers.
Notes:
The very first article on the Twin Cities sauna revival in 2014 by Jacob Wheeler of the City Pages. (City Pages went belly up a few years ago but you can still read the article here on Saunatimes.com.)
Special thanks to Lynn Derby, Rachael Hitsley, Scott and Anne Pollock and especially Lynn Smith and Chris Dykstra for opening up their backyards and giving the original 612 Sauna Society its deep roots of hospitality and neighborly fellowship.
Photo albums:
The early years: 612 Sauna Society at the Firehouse 2012 - 2016
612 Sauna Society at Little Box Sauna, Winter 2015/16
612 Sauna Society Kickstarter campaign party & residency at Surly Brew
6 12 Sauna Society Cooperative kickoff gala at the American Swedish Institute
The Coop’s first season at the Loppet Trailhead, Summer 2017
Misc 612 Sauna Society Cooperative residencies 2017-18
© 2025 John Pederson / Thermaculture
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