Willow Prairie Cabin - History

History

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.

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