Willow Prairie Cabin

About this property

The Willow Prairie Cabin is a rustic one-room cabin located in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in western Oregon, United States. It was built by a road construction crew in 1924. When the road was finished the United States Forest Service began using it to house fire crews assigned to patrol the surrounding National Forest. The Forest Service now rents the cabin to recreational visitors. The Willow Prairie Cabin is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Willow Prairie Cabin was built in 1924 by a Forest Service road crew that was constructing a highway from Butte Falls to Fish Lake. Because the forest roads were not well developed, it was impractical for workers to make a daily round-trip from Butte Falls to the remote Willow Prairie construction site. To facilitate work at the sites, the road crew used the Willow Prairie Cabin as their base-camp from 1924 until the highway was finished in 1926. When the road was completed, the Forest Service began using the cabin as a barracks to house fire crews assigned to patrol the Willow Prairie area. In the 1950s, the Forest Service built the Willow Prairie Campground adjacent to the cabin. In the early 1990s, the Forest Service built 19 miles of interconnecting horse trails in the Willow Prairie area. In 1991, the Willow Prairie Campground was converted into a horse camp and the cabin was opened to the public as a rental unit. The simple log structure is an excellent example of an early Forest Service wilderness crew cabin. Because of the cabin's rustic architecture and its unique historic value as an early Forest Service guard station, the Willow Prairie Cabin was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. The Willow Prairie Cabin is located in a remote area of the Butte Falls Ranger District in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. It sits on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains, at about 4,300 feet (1,300 m) elevation. The cabin is surrounded by a mature conifer forest just southwest of Mount McLoughlin. It is adjacent to Willow Prairie meadow, a large high country wetland with several beaver ponds. The Willow Prairie Cabin is a one-room log structure with a wooden shake roof. There are two shutter-style windows without glass. Heat is provided by a wood-burning stove. The cabin's rustic furnishings include a table and chairs along with two simple sleeping cots. The cabin has built-in counter-space for preparing meals and places to hang lanterns. However, visitors must bring their own lanterns or lights as well as a portable camp stove, cookware, utensils, and bedding. The Willow Prairie Cabin has a maximum capacity is four people, and is available to rent throughout the year. The $15 per night rental fee is used to preserve and maintain the cabin.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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