Tuesday, October 16, 2007

When a tree falls

Here is another photo from the weekend. This is an old mining cabin from the 1940s or before. It's along a stream with cedars deep in the forest. A few years ago a tree fell in the winter and broke down the roof. Before that you could go inside and get out of the weather if it was snowing or raining.

3 comments:

Megan said...

I love stumbling across these old cabins. Before the Wilderness Act, (my father has told me) there were lots of these types of cabins in the Weminuche Wilderness, but the USFS burnt them all down because they didn't want squatters in them. However, you can still see some skelton cabins. On the other side over on the San Juan National Forest you can still come across cattleman's cabins. The are still operational cabins. I just love those old places.

Diane Lowe said...

There's definitely something rustic and visceral about those old cabins.

It makes me wonder how someone could live there, completely isolated from the rest of the world.

Although at times that must be a nice feeling!

don said...

Megan, This cabin is in a national Forest, but there are pieces of private land here and there around it that people used to live on. Someone has range land rights still. They used to mine for mica up there. So someone probably had a claim. They used mica for the little "eisenglass" in the fronts of old wood stoves.

My mom, dad, and my Grandfather all worked for the FS. My grandfather was a ranger in Idaho in the late 20s and then again in the 40s and 50s. He worked for the game department in the 30s.

Squatters are still around and still an issue from time to time. Now days they can be dangerous to run across. We used to have an employee who lived in the woods during the summer before she worked for us. She wasn't dangerous however.

Diane, you would have lots of forest animals to keep you company, but the winters would be long. You should see the outhouse!