My son Ted and I spent Thanksgiving this year on our own. My wife Janelle’s mother had open heart surgery so she has been down with her. Our daughter Emily stayed in Portland and celebrated Thanksgiving with friends.
We decided to find a place that served a traditional Thanksgiving meal and was open on the holiday and ended up at the Riverhouse Restaurant. While eating our dinner we spotted this old log cabin across the river and decided to check it out when we were done. Turns out it has a pretty interesting history. Copyright Photo by Kent Griswold
The cabin was used by the Old Sterns Cattle Company as a mine shack in the early 1900s along the Lazy River, south of Sunriver, Oregon.
In the 1970s, it was used in an old Western film with John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn called “Rooster Cogburn.” Shot in Smith Rock State Park, the cabin moved to this site after filming ended. A piece of old Hollywood in our little town of Bend, Oregon!
Managing Partner of the Riverhouse Hotel, Wayne Purcell, talks about the history of this cabin in the video below from Zolo Media.