Restored cabins offer a glimpse into rugged mountain life

Have you ever thought about living in a log cabin, amid the deep silence and solitude of a mountain winter, at 10,000 feet elevation? Well, Great Basin National Park near Baker, Nev., now makes it a lot easier to imagine what that kind of life would be like.  The park recently finished restoring seven historic cabins at two locations that were home to intrepid miners and their families in the early 1900s. Even today, Great Basin is considered one of the most remote national parks in the Lower 48 states.

At the turn of the last century, it must have felt a little like living on the moon.  “I can only imagine how difficult it was,” said Dave Tilford, whose ancestors originally built one of the restored cabins as a kind of commissary and mess hall for the workers at their tungsten mine and sawmill. “They worked extremely hard, and as we look back today, we think we don’t know how they could have done it. But they did it.”

The Tilford Cabin restoration, finished in 2015, is the most complete of the historic structures. The cabin was built by Tilford’s uncle, John Tilford, from quartzite rocks with a timber roof, partially dug into a slope. It is one of several structures that once existed along Snake Creek at the Bonita Mine, which is named after Dave’s cousin, Bonnie, who lived at the mine as a child.  When the project started, what remained of the cabin was little more than a bunch of rocks piled around an old wooden door frame. It was rebuilt based on historic photographs to look just as it did in the 1940s, when the mine last operated. The restoration cost about $30,000.

“It’s really quite interesting to imagine, when you’re there, what it would have been like in the winter,” said Eva Jensen, the park’s cultural resource program manager. “It gives you an appreciation for the tenacity of these early miners.”  The other six restored cabins sit in an even more remote location near Johnson Lake, at an elevation of more than 10,000 feet. Even here, miners lived and worked with their families year-round — even through harsh winters.   The Johnson Lake cabins were built of logs, and the restoration in this case was intended merely to stabilize the buildings in their natural, decayed state.

So walls were rebuilt with new logs as needed, but roofs were not replaced. This project cost $512,000 and included a complete archeological inventory of the area that gathered  more than 10,000 artifacts. The area where the cabins sit is part of an historic district that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Both the Bonita and Johnson mine operations saw their heyday during World War I and primarily focused on obtaining tungsten. The mineral was vital to the process of hardening steel, so it was much in demand during the war. It was also an important element in early light bulbs.

 So, although these cabins were essentially cut off from the world by a harsh climate and remote location, they were still vital to the rest of the nation at an important time.  “The mining in Nevada really began with these little operations, and some of them continued and got really big, like the mines you see today,” Jensen said. “But most of them started out as, like, these two intrepid guys who found some minerals.”

Reaching the Johnson cabins requires a strenuous but beautiful hike uphill into a lightly visited section of the park. The route follows the old wagon road that miners used to move supplies and ore up and down the mountain.  “The setting is beautiful where the residential cabins are,” Jensen said. “It’s a cirque formation, and the lake is extremely clear, clean water.” Tilford said he is glad to see the cabins protected, not only to preserve his own family’s mining legacy, but as a reminder to all Americans about the lifestyle and work ethic that built a strong nation.   

“America has not been very good at preserving any of the history of the old West,” he said. “More and more in the last 20 years or so, it seems like it’s fashionable if you find an old building to tear it down, or shoot at it, or take the boards away to put in your family room. I’d like for visitors to think about their own ancestors and what they did — and also to think about preservation.”  

For more information:

 Tilford Cabin and Bonita Mine

https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/news/upload/2014winter.pdf

 Johnson Lake Historic Mining District

https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/historyculture/johnson-lake-historic-mining-district.htm