Ghost Cabins on LoLo Creek, Lewis and Clark Trail, Part 2

Gold Miners Cabin

Musselshell Meadows

Daylight.   Day 2 on the historic Lolo trail.  Sept. of 2010.  The smell of aromatic cedar filled my nostrils as I emerged from the camper.  I stretched and yawned and was greeted by whispering water, coursing over cold granite cobble and river rock.  The Lewis and Clark expedition trekked through this region in 1805 and covered the same territory in 1806 on their return back east to St. Louis.   

The morning sun rays arrowed through the surrounding fir trees, and grudgingly surrendered a feeble warmness.   Filtered by 150 feet or more of tree branch.  Old growth forest. If your socks were wet you could hang them on a branch and they might dry by late afternoon.  Maybe.  I found some newspaper and wadded them up and placed them in the fire pit.  A layer of white ash was all that remained of last nights blaze.    


I took my axe and split some kindling off a piece of cedar.  Easy, effortless and uncomplicated.  Like chopsticks 18 inches long and painfully dry.    I laid the pieces on top of the dry newspaper and struck a match and ignited the newspaper.  The flames nibbled at the news and chomped at the wood, like wolf teeth on elk bones.  A bonfire emerged to give real warmth to the cold.           


After breakfast we headed towards Musselshell camp, where I had worked my first summer with the Forest Service back in 1975. The road followed Lolo Creek, in a north westerly direction, coiling and curling in the confines of the narrow canyon.
 
We noticed couple of old buildings near the creek about 3 miles into our trip.  There were two old log cabins in a small clearing surrounded by tall fir and pine trees.  Logs harvested from the nearby forest then neatly notched to fit together then neatly stacked to form walls.

Probably erected by gold miners a few decades back, to give them shelter while the working the placer gold in the creek.  Little bitty pieces of gold dust and larger nuggets sifted from the gravels. Claims then abandoned after their diggings ran out of pay dirt.  The placer gold was all panned out and and riches hauled off.  The cabin roofs were sheathed in tired tin, stained with streaks of brown rust.   

Small fir trees had started to move in and grow tight up against the cabins, hugging the timbers.  The tin roof on one cabin was partially ripped away, by the gales of winter, tearing away at history .  The forest will fully reclaim this meadow in the next 20 years and the cabins will slowly rot into the ground.  Slow oxidation.  

Mounds of gravel poked out here along the sides of the stream, and they were being slowly devoured by brush and small trees.  The damaging detritus of placer gold mining.  The historic marks of sourdoughs at work with pick axe, shovel and gold pan sluicing the sands and gravels.  Turned the creek upside down.  I am glad the gold miners had gone bust and moved on, letting nature slowly shake off the damage to this beautiful valley.


Within an hour we spotted Musselshell Meadows, a lush prairie surrounded by tall trees.  We drove by the Forest Service work station, a small cluster of buildings with several vehicles parked on the gravel.   It looked completely unfamiliar to me, after a 36 year absence.    There used to be a cluster of old bunk houses with a nearby cook shack but they were gone or unrecognizable and had probably been torn down to provide better lodgings.

Musselshell Meadows brought back a flash fire of memories, like brilliant gold nuggets emerging from the sand.