Thayer Lake East Shelter Cabin – Admiralty Island AK

Description

The Thayer Lake East Shelter Cabin is a historic cabin in the Admiralty Island National Monument. It is one of the several cabins the Civilian Conservation Corps built in the Tongass National Forest for public recreation during the 1930s, and is part of the Admiralty Island Canoe Route. As reported on a registration form of the National Register of Historic Places, the cabin was in ruins as of 1995. The site continues to be a stop for canoers.

“The Thayer Lake East Shelter Cabin site is the ruin of a three-sided shelter. It was not built in the post-and-beam style typical of the other three-sided shelters. Instead, it consisted of logs laid horizontal to make three walls, with the fourth wall consisting of short logs at the two corners facing the lake. The logs had sawn ends and were saddle-notched to attach them at the corners. When documented, the site consisted of the cabin ruin, displaying up to three courses of wall logs ranging from twelve to twenty inches in diameter. The logs of the north/south axis are ten feet long, those of the other axis are fifteen feet long. No roof members were identified. The 1937 camp stove and fireplace manual published by the USDA Forest Service for “Emergency Conservation Work” pictures a three-sided horizontal log cabin like the Thayer Lake East example and identifies it as an “Adirondack shelter.” The roof drawn on the building in the manual is like that of the other three-sided shelter cabins built by Civilian Conservation Corps workers on the Admiralty Island canoe route. The Thayer Lake East ruin is definitely that of a cabin built differently from the other shelter cabins along the route. The location of the site, at the edge of Thayer Lake where the trail to Distin Lake begins, is typical of shelter cabin placement along the canoe route. The trail in the area appears on the 1936 map of the canoe route, but a shelter cabin at Thayer Lake East is not shown.”