History
The Whisky Creek Cabin was built in about 1880 by an unknown miner. The original structure was very basic, consisting of four walls, a dirt floor, and wooden shake roof. A flume ditch was constructed near the cabin around 1890 to provide water for hydraulic mining on Whisky Creek. The flume begins about one half mile up the stream from the cabin and ends at the gully behind the tool shed. In 1905, the flume was extended to a point about 50 feet (15 m) above Whisky Creek bar. This flume ditch also provided drinking water for the cabin.
The first recorded mining claim on Whisky Creek was filed by P.H Rushmore in 1917. Rushmore sold his claim to Cy Whiteneck a year later. Whiteneck lived at Whisky Creek for the next 30 years. During that time, he improved the original cabin by laying a wooden floor and adding a second room. He also constructed several work sheds near the cabin. Over the years, Whiteneck used hydraulic mining methods to extract gold from the creek, but never got rich.
In 1948, Whiteneck sold his claim to L. M. Nichols and his wife. In 1957, Nichols hired Lou Martin to be the property’s caretaker. Martin continued to mine Whisky Creek during the sixteen years he lived there. He also improved the site. Martin built a solar-heated shower adjacent to one of the sheds and added a large walk-in pantry next to the cabin. Martin also constructed a cable car to haul firewood across the creek. To accomplish that, he strung half-inch steel cable 480 feet (150 m) across the creek, and tightened it with a system of hand-winches and pulleys. Martin remained the on-site caretaker until 1973 when the property was sold to the Bureau of Land Management.
In 1973, Bureau of Land Management installed interpretive signs at the site and opened the cabin to the public for self-guided tours. Because of cabin’s unique heritage as the oldest surviving mining cabin in the Rogue River Canyon, the Whisky Creek Cabin was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 5 September 1975. The historic area cover 20 acres (81,000 m2) and includes the cabin and one additional contributing structure.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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