By Molly Snyder Senior Writer Published Sep 18, 2013 at 6:24 PM

So get this: the iconic Keebler elves from television ads and cookie packages are real and they believe the world could use a little more magic, so they built tiny doors at the base of trees around the country just for fun and to represent their passion for baking cookies inside hollow trees.

Either that, or it’s something called the Tiny Door Project, a grassroots marketing campaign spearheaded by an experiential marketing agency called City Evention that initiated the creation of 40 tiny doors in 12 cities across the nation, including one at the base of a tree in Bay View’s Humboldt Park.

Either way, as lovers of both cookies and elves, my family and I decided to go in search of this tiny door. And after searching for about 30 minutes, we found it.

If you want to know where it is, email me. Otherwise, I will just assure you there is, indeed, a small wooden "elf" door at the base of a tree in the park.

The hub for the campaign is a Tumblr page which includes a map displaying the locations of the doors, as well as photos.

Apparently, organizers get permission for each door and they do not harm the trees because the doors are nailed to the ground, not the trees.

This makes the elves very happy. And it makes me crave cookies.


Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.

Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.