Historic Cabin being restored

Story by Jennifer Alexander, Outdoor Recreation Planner, Billings Field Office

Pen’s Cabin is a historic cabin nestled between two Wilderness Study Areas on top of the Pryor Mountains, in the middle of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range. It was originally built sometime after May 1925 by Perrin Cummings, also known as Pen.

Years of battling the wicked weather at 8,000+ feet atop the Pryors has taken its toll. The bottom logs are rotting beneath the structure, the widow logs are weak, and the roof is twisting and sagging.  The silver lining is the structure sits relatively close to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, home to a historic building preservation team.

As luck would have it, Ryan Bradshaw with the BLM works routinely with the folks at the NPS in cooperation with the wild horse program. Ryan was able to utilize the relationships he has built to get the park service to perform an assessment of the cabin in 2017.

In 2018 archeologist Jen Macy with the Billings Field Office garnered funds to put together an interagency agreement with the NPS to perform the much needed work on the cabin.

The past few weeks BLM Park ranger Don Galvin has hauled logs and gravel over the less than maintained route to Pen’s cabin. It takes a grueling nine hours to travel from Lovell, Wyoming, to the top of the mountain with a truck and flatbed trailer bumping over shelf rock and boulders with each tire rotation.

Now the work has begun. The NPS historic building preservation crew jacked up the cabin, pulled out the rotten pieces of what was left of logs, and has begun the process of replacing the puzzle pieces. New foundation logs are beginning to take shape under the soil. Old crumbing chinking between logs has been removed, and supporting window logs are now the color of fresh cut pine, replacing the old weathered gray.  As the project continues the crew will work to match the new log color to the old.

Winter is starting to take hold, and the NPS has suspended work until the snow thaws – likely not until June. Anyone making a last minute trip to view the wild horses or take a peek inside the cabin before the snow settles for the winter is going to find the cabin gift wrapped. The wrapping is intended to protect the cabin until the crew can get back to work next year.

The cabin was stabilized in 2003 by BLM staff and volunteers. It measures 22 feet 3 inches northwest-southeast by 17 feet 2 inches southwest-northeast. This will be the first full face lift since Pen Cummings

crafted the cabin 94 years ago.