by JT
My friend and I rode our motorcycles over to the Bighorn Canyon in the Pryor Mountain Range near Lovell, Wyoming. While we were there we took these pictures of these original cabins.
To get to these cabins you need to take Rt 14 A over the Bighorn Mountain towards Lovell, Wyoming and take a right onto 37 which takes you into the Bighorn Canyon Recreation area, you have to go through Wyoming on 37 into Montana and the cabins will be off 37 on the left side.
It was really interesting to see what the pioneers lived in and compare what they had to what we have. Hope you like the pictures as much as I loved taking them. I also have some pictures of Wild Bighorn Sheep and Wild Horses we took while in that canyon.
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nice… jeremiah johnson style… 😉
The house is homey ans sweet.. But the land is what moves me. Absolutely gorgeous. Dee
According to the sign at these cabins, the dugout cabin with the stalls would have been the first cabin the settlers would have built. They would have lived and slept in there the very first winter with the animals until the next year when they could build their home.
That is my friend Dennis in the pictures, he’s about 5′ 8 or 9″ tall. I had him stand in the pictures to show how low the ceilings were in these cabins.
JT
The windows and doors look don’t appear to be original vintage on the featured cabin.
No, The door on the cabin and windows aren’t original. The old ones rotted off and were replaced with these to keep the critters out.
Great pictures, but no way possible that these are ‘originals’ – not without a fireplace. No settler in his right mind would have built a permanent dwelling (lots of man-hours to build) in such a cold environment as Wyoming and not put in a fireplace and chimney. These MUST be recreations, or have otherwise been modified. Great design, but having owned one, and toured several ‘untouched’ pre-civil war cabins from North Carolina to Missouri, I can tell you that MOST (but not all) were packed dirt floor, or ‘slate rock’ and dirt-mortar, and they had proportionately large hearths – because warmth, cooking, light all were acquired from the fireplace. Whether you are burning horse-chips in Montana plains, or Mesquite down in Texas (or locust or elm in North Carolina), that hearth is critical. (it’s also why the ceiling is low in most original cabins – because heat rises, and tall cabins are a lot more work, to lift the logs, that then end up causing your floor to be cold while your ceiling you can’t fully appreciate at 8-9 feet, is hot. Face it – pioneers were smarter than ‘modern man’.