old cabins in the forest
 

I used to go to this old cabin...it didn't really belong to anyone though it sat on National Wildlife Refuge property and it gave the local government boys pleasure to believe they owned it.

Nevertheless...this cabin was built by a prospector in the 1940's as a remote mining cabin that he used both winter and summer off and on to mine for placer gold in the creek and surrounding hills. You had to hike in about 4 miles from the lakeshore to get to this cabin, and actually very few people knew about it. I was definitely the most frequent user of the place after Joe passed away. It was a really cool place to hang out in mid October when the creek got low and barely flowed.

Unfortunately about 5 years ago we had really heavy rains one fall and the hillside above this cabin gave way and a landslide took the place out. I hiked in to use the cabin and pan for a little gold the next spring and I found the roof upside down in the creek bed. It broke my heart ! I had the place fixed up with bow saws and axes and pots and pans and hauled in a cot to sleep on. I put plexiglass windows in the place too.

A survival shelter really doesn't have to be much. This cabin is only 10 X 12 feet and pretty much handmade from surrounding trees with simple handtools and a few nails. The wood shingles were handsplit on site. The woodstove wass only about 10 gallons...thats a 6 inch stove pipe coming out of it. About the size of a small wall tent, but it was warm and cozy with the fire going after freezing in the creek bed looking for a little color.

It wasn't fancy...but thats okay...

Anyway I was reminiscing about the old place and thought I'd chat about it a bit.

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This old cabin was built by a trapper in 1924 and he used it as a line cabin to set traps from his home cabin. It was 3 miles back in the woods from the lake. I had read the trappers old diary and figured out about where it was from his description of the terrain so I hiked in one year and found the place.

I measured it and it was 10 X 10 feet. Just big enough to crawl into during the winter months and spend the night while he tended his traps trying to catch wolverine, coyote, wolf, beaver...

The metal on the roof was from blazo cans that had been cut up to make roofing material...the oldtimers never missed a trick and never wasted anything. It took him about five days to build this cabin according to his diary...but then again he was of Finnish origin, a hard worker and no emails to answer. There were no roads in 1924...the rivers were the highways, and in the winter the dogteams ran the trails...

Yeah it looks a little beat up now...but in the 1920's I bet this looked pretty darn good to a tired guy on snowshoes in the middle of nowhere making a living off of the land...

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This is a real cool thread you started gasilat. One of my friends (much older than me) use to hike in the mountains of southwest MT. He said he was amazed at some of the big mining equipment he would run across out in the middle of nowhere (especially on a wooded hillside). Those old timers were some tough, determined people.

A coworker of mine had a very old log barn on some land he bought. He and his family reused most of the logs and made a beautiful family cabin. That old wood is so much better - nice and dense.

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I stumbled on a cabin a few miles from me the other day. (In one of the parts of New Jersey that does not suck :wink: ) Built in the 40's. Abandoned now and owned by a nature conservancy. The roof looks like cardboard, buts it is still dry inside.

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This is one of my cabins....my avatar is a photo I took from this cabin...

I have a few acres and this old place I go to from time to time...we're not sure what year the log work was done but it was definitely before 1928. It was a mess when I bought the place but I fixed it up fairly comfy...this is a long ways from the road system...

Its 13 X 18 feet and two people could live here well but the long winters inside would test the best of relationships !

Its a nice place to escape to and reflect on things that matter to me...All together I've probably spent 3 years of my life in this little cabin. It was wonderful.

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its late, i'll do some more tomorrow...

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Cool beans!

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Great pictures my friend. Really cool.

Those old time trappers and prospectors were a tough breed. I was (and still am although less now) a trapper. In my school boy days after a day of "long-lining" it (HAHA....on a few ponds and a creek or two). I would go home and read the Fur Fish and Game for the stories of old time trappers snowshoeing their true long-lines and staying in cabins along the way that they built. I used to dream of heading to the Canadian wilds in search of the martan, beaver, and wolverine. Working from a main base cabin and snowshoeing or canoeing to my satellite cabins. Living off the land and being one with nature and the wild things in the woods.

I would order the $2-$5 books out of the back of the magazine and read them non-stop. I wanted to be one of those big woods trappers so bad. Thanks for the pictures and stirring the dreams of my youth.

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Great shots.

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between the movie Jeremiah Johnson and the tv show Grizzly Adams

i wanted to run off and be a mountain man

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what people think of as comfortable vs function


i love visiting old cabins/buildings out in the middle of nowhere
take a look around inside and then sit awhile outside
and wonder what life was like when this cabin/building was built

back in the early 90's, was gearing up
for a summer bike ride to visit the ghost towns of Southern Ontario
but then i had to do something stupid, like get a good paying job


great thread, gasilat :emotions16:

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You might enjoy the book that Jeremiah Johnson is based on: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson. It is much better than the approved Hollywood version

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This gives me an idea for a TV show

Attachment 68939

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Thanks for the great thread and pics Gasilat. I've got a 10 acre parcel a little over an hour from me in the mountains. I've built a few different versions of plywood shacks with tarped roofs with varying degrees of success. I've used mine for a warming hut in the winter when out x-county skiing and in the summer just camping out. I'd really like to spend some time and build a "real" cabin so my family could stay multiple days and be more comfortable whether winter or summer. Maybe this year once the snow melts.....

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:smile:

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Nice video. That guy was 51 years old and moving 20 foot timber to the top of that cabin by himself. Pretty stout. I would have likely had a hard time just pulling it the 300 yards to the wood pile after cutting the spring before.

I will look up more on this series. Really nice video.

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It's been a long time since I watched, but it's a great series. I believe he gave his place to the state of AK eventually.

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he did give it to the parks , i seen some thing about this last year he to old now to go there , i watch his movie a couple of times , the parks keep his place up for him . thanks every one for there pic , i have a place like that on my land also i used for hunting an just to get away , just about to finish my new place soon i will post pic then an ones of the old cabin to

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This is a photo taken of the place I have now back in the 1950's I would estimate...the guy moved into this cabin in 1936 and did a little bit of everything to get by, he sluiced for a little gold in the creeks, trapped in the winters, and assisted guided on big game hunts in the mountains in the fall...

the rest of the time he grew his own garden, gathered firewood, hunted and fished and subsisted...no electricity, no chainsaw...he loved this area and these mountains...and it proved to me that a person could live here and exist relatively independent of civilization...

here is a pic of a coyote that came by one day...I've had coyotes run right along my snowmachine like they were a dog before, I guess they sensed I mean them no harm.

Looks like wolverine, lynx and coyote catch in this old photo...
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this old cabin was built about 1915 as a base trapping cabin...

before one of the oldtimers around here died he told me that 40 years ago he took off walking up a trail behind this place and 4 and half miles in found one of the line cabins the originally trapper had built and that it was untouched...which means the traps were still hanging on the wall, and that nothing had been taken from the place...

one of the trips i need to make is to go find that line cabin...i'm sure its pretty much fallen down now, but still I would like to see it...people are always telling me their secrets about what is in these woods, i can't keep up with the things i need to go see...

back to this place though you'll notice it had a dirt floor and may not suit everyone :) , but i've thrown down in here a few times over the years. there are brown bear on the creek its next to fishing in the summers, no need for me to be sleeping outside. I haven't stayed here for a long time though...

12.5 X 15.5 feet according to my notes...
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Fascinating thread....Kinda the opposite of "urban exploration" which I also find intriguing.

One question though....I wonder how these cabins can survive so long without being pillaged by thieves or burned down by the numerous forest fires throughout the decades?

This needs to be a sticky on this sub-forum...

Re: old cabins in the forest
 

this is another trappers cabin i have stayed in before...built in the 1920's

this one did burn down i guess about 8 years ago or so...some snowmachiners had come in to use the place and fired up the woodstove and then went out riding their machines...

now, critters such as squirrels like to stash pine cones in the attics of these cabins. a lot of these type of places have only single wall stove pipe all the way through and not usually in good condition...my guess is that is how the fire got going and the place was unfortunately lost.

i always check out the stove pipe from bottom to top on any place i stay in to make sure no flammables have been deposited by animals or the wind that could catch on fire before i strike a match...

and here is another tip...always have some heavy duty aluminum foil to wrap rusted out woodstoves and pipes, its not as good as replacing the defective items but heavy duty foil will last a few days. you will see aluminum foil on a couple of the stoves in my photos...it also makes for a good temporary gasket on the door to get a better seal so a barrel stove burns more like an airtight and all night without having to get up at 2am when its about 10 F in the cabin. it seems like i'm the one that always gets up in the middle of the night to keep the fire going while everyone else pretends they're sleeping...

:)
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Re: old cabins in the forest
 

this is an old trappers cabin too...built in the 1930's

natural materials were used by these early pioneers and so these are spruce handsplit shingles from trees fallen nearby...the importance of these photos is to demonstrate how log cabins deteriorate over time...

a cabin is destroyed by:

the ground up, from the base logs sitting directly on dirt and repeatedly and continuously being wet over the years...if they are resting on gravel and high enough to drain water the bottom logs will last much longer...or even better on a foundation of some kind, but that was rarely done in the old days...

the top down, as demonstrated in this photo spruce shingles will rot out in less than 50 years and need to be replaced. Metal roofs though not as aesthetic are far superior in length of time they will survive and are excellent protection against forest fires.

the side in, inadequate roof eaves that don't extend far enough out results in water soaking into logs and the freeze/thaw cycle will eventually cause logs to deteriorate usually in the corners where the wall logs cross each other...

this cabin has dovetail corners with drops on the cut sloping down for a natural drainage of water...this is a very good construction method to avoid damage on corners and is very pleasing to the eye...scandinavians employed this method of building log cabin corners extensively in this area a hundred years ago...

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Some great stuff here! You have the makings of a neat little book with these stories! Thanks for sharing them with us.

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there is sense of purity when in the mountains that goes beyond the fresh air and outdoors...probably because its not easy to do and the people you meet are only those that truly love them and respect them...

1982
...............

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Great thread! I love finding old ruins in the woods. Thoreau and all...:smile:

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Of course, the best place to prospect is where others have prospected in the past.

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Great thread! It inspired me to take the camera and go for a hike up to the abandoned cabin near my family's farm. Back when I was a kid there was a classic log cabin there that was always fun to explore but it burned down 15-20 years ago leaving only the stone chimney behind. At some point since then somebody put this small cabin in its place but its pretty dilapidated now.
http://i40.tinypic.com/9uc0td.jpg<p>http://i41.tinypic.com/357edkj.jpg<p>http://i41.tinypic.com/30cq7hh.jpg<p>http://i41.tinypic.com/f4rbkj.jpg<p>http://i43.tinypic.com/lxzqg.jpg<p>http://i43.tinypic.com/2ihklg5.jpg<p>http://i43.tinypic.com/rsv5uv.jpg<p>...looks like a bird has himself a pretty nice setup...

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That's less an old forest cabin than a tiny modern slap-dash piece of shit.
No offense intended.
EDIT The builder probably did the best he could.

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Yeah its a wreck, even new it was not much to look at. Good for high-schoolers to get trashed in that's about it.

Log cabins are too much work for me...

Now an off the grid shipping container turned cabin that could be loaded onto a truck/train/ship/plane/helicopter and delivered anywhere in the world, then you'd be speaking my language.:565:

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Lovely thread. There are similar cabins and shacks along the Inside Passage. Most are falling apart. You can see where someone planted lilacs or perennial flowers lifetimes ago. I know two little islands that have secret apple trees - good places to drop anchor in early fall.

It's interesting how many socialists claim to aspire to this kind of life, but would be completely lost if you gave it to them.

But you do realize that this talk gives control freaks the creeps, don't you? Not a single bylaw officer or surveillance camera in sight... No carbon tax... No sodium fluoride in the water... Not even any money. Just ridiculous...

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This place was built in 1928 and is a fine example of dovetail notch construction. The guy that built this cabin was from Finland, a big game guide and a trapper. Very nice logwork.

The story goes that he drank milk because of stomach problems so he brought a cow all the way back in here and built a barn (showed on the last set of pics) just to keep his cow safe from the brown bears. Yeah I can imagine a few bears showed up and got it right between the eyes for messing with this guys cow !

His brother was a big game guide too and unfortunately the two of them got into a little spat over a client that picked one over the other and they never talked again. His brother died in 1939 and the other in 1954.

Okay we�ve all had spats and disagreements and splitups...but really life is pretty short and once a person gets over being angry they need to man-up and patch things up and move forward. I�ve been to too many funerals where someone was bawling there eyes out and confessed to everyone at the service they hadn�t spoken with the person that recently died because they had been feuding over something insignificant. Don�t let that be you.

Anyway I�ve stayed here a few nights before and I remember this being a tight cabin and it held the heat pretty good.

Beautiful single pane windows.
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This old place has mystery to it...I think it was probably built around 1905 as a hunting cabin but I am taking a giant step of faith...

if you look at the notches you can tell they are flattened and not sloping and an inferior imitation of a dovetail notch...and so I surmise the original builder was not Swede or Finnish right off the boat with old world skills.

I do have one old photo of what it looked like when it is was in usable condition taken probably in the 1920's...and yep thats an eagle all spread out. Eagles were considered predators against the salmon runs and at one time the govmint paid a bounty on them. I think it was five dollars an eagle.

They would bury you under the jail for shooting an eagle now...

there are lots and lots of eagles back here because of the salmon spawning in the streams...

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I think this place was built around 1895.

I have it shown on maps as far back as 1898. This time period borders on prehistory for this area and so by rumor and conjecture I think it was constructed as a hunting cabin and a trappers cabin. Its location puts it at the base of some mountains with fine dall sheep and caribou hunting during that time period.

I took this photo in 1983. The cabin measures out at 12 x 14 feet and would have been an acceptable sized residence for one person.

yep, more fuel can metal on a building. Cans of fuel used to come 2 in wooden boxes and the boxes were then used as furniture and kitchen cabinets by the oldtimers and homesteaders. If you look at my first post you will see a box used as a seat in front of the table.

Nothing was wasted.
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Thanks much for the thread Gasilat! Reminds me of several old cabins I have found in the U.P. of Michigan. Heavy snows in that area are murder on even the most strongly constructed ones. Come to think of it it even reminds me of one I found only a dozen years ago far back in the big lower Muskegon River Swamp behind my house. That was only an 8'x8'er, but would have done the job. Questioning of a member of the family that had the property discovered that it was a 1920s moonshine shack.

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Aloha and thanks for the thread Gasilat.
Unfortunately, all I have here is going out into the scrub jungle and finding abandoned bunkers. I found a hidden bomb shelter the other day, but have not got down to the entrance yet. Lots of WWII stuff here on Oahu.
Aloha
Turtleguy

Re: old cabins in the forest
 

Here's an aerial shot (courtesy of MSN's livemaps) of that dilapidated cabin I posted pictures of before...<p>http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...abinaerial.jpg

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This is now my favorite GIM thread , thanks to all for the neat stories and photos and special thank you's to gasilat !:applause_

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Just think, no Centex, no Citi Bank and no tax collector!!

Gasilat, I wonder if anyone every did a book on these and how they were built...I am going to B & N and see if I can buy one...

I have alway enjoyed PBS, one hour show, of a guy who built one and lived off the land....1930 or so, I am guessing...

I wished the pictures were larger; to be able to examine the details...

Many thanks and I hope there are future installments..:23_28_100s:

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Found 3 cabins, 2 collapsed and one still erect, but ready to go (ridge pole 75% rotton).

Being too practical to see the remaining cabin destroyed, I opted to dissassemble it, float it down the watershed and stash it for future use.

This will make one hell of a nice gazeebo with a sauna/changeroom at the camp.

I figure she is about 80 years old. Broad ax marks on the flatted surfaces. Horse hair chinking. I believe she is built from eastern fir.

Even with no door or windows, the inside post and beam construction was immaculate.

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Well done sir!

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I didn't have the heart to see the third collapse and go to waste. Hand hewn and all...

Thanks, btw.

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BellevueBully,

That is simply bad ass. Hope you enjoy your new sauna!

sb

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Found a few more good shots......

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Are these the pics of the re-build?

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No, those are during disassembly.

The rebuild pics will have lots of empty beer bottles, a b-b-q, and a hot MILF in a bikini.

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Gasilat.........Thanks for starting a great thread and all the neat pics. I'd also like to thank all who shared in this thread.
Alone in the Wilderness was great!!

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I'm about ready to take up a re-construction fund.....

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Great thread ---

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Anybody catch what happend to Eagle a few weeks ago?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30619771/