Eagle River, WI

[400brian]

We own this cabin and 220 acres with my wife's two brothers. Her Grandfather bought the first parcel in the late forties, it is just a few miles north of town. No electricity, no phone ( though we all have cells now ) no running water. 200 miles north of where we live, I try to get up for a weekend every fall.

In the photo, the Mayor is getting a fire started that would eventually consume a cord of firewood, and be topped off with a full bag of charcoal, just to cook a few steaks for a few minutes. But they WERE Excellent!

[ChickenRat]

Brian,

Cool shack. Those vertical log cabins were what they were building back in the 30's & 40's. We have a log cabin in northern, MN that is a vertical log place and the builders wrote the year it was built on the kitchen ceiling then varnished over it. It was built in 1937. It still is being enjoyed to this day...

Robb

[400brian]

Good observation Robb. When the Grandfather bought the property, it had been heavily logged off ( the cabin sits on the sawmill site ). The high ground was clear cut. But the property has the Deerskin river running through it, ( and associated swamp ) and they managed to pull enough timber out of little out of the way places to build the cabin, and most of a house back here in Poynette. The property has been logged a couple of times since ( pulp ) They planted a thousand pines every year for 10 years according to the father in-law, and those trees are pretty good size now.

When I first started going up there in the mid '70s, there were a lot of cabins and small houses built with the vertical log method. They seem to be pretty much gone now. Our cabin sits on a concrete slab, the gravel for which came out of the hill right behind it ( It was a low buck operation ) The sandy soil and resultant excellent drainage, have helped keep the logs from rotting at the base too bad.

It was built as a deer hunting shack. There very few deer in the southern half of the state in the forties. Now they are like rats here.