Burgdorf Guard Station

The cabin on Forest Road 246

The Warren Wagon Road runs paved about 30 miles north of McCall. There, gravel Forest Road #246 turns off to the left. Two miles on, the three-site Burgdorf Campground lies on the left, and the guard station stands just beyond it in a small meadow, with mountains behind it and a stream running alongside. Recreation.gov gives the elevation as 6,250 feet. It describes the site as forested at the edge of open meadows, with warm summer days and cool nights.

The Payette National Forest rents the cabin by the night. Its reservation listing names the site “Ranger House.” Inside are a living room, a kitchen, a full bathroom and two bedrooms with a queen bed in each, enough for four. The kitchen has a refrigerator and a gas range and oven. A few dishes and some silverware are supplied, but guests are asked to bring their own. The lights run on solar power, a wood-burning stove gives the heat, and there are no outlets.

A ramp leads to the front door. The bathroom has a wheelchair-accessible shower stall, toilet and sink, and a fire pit sits behind the cabin. Firewood may be on hand. The Forest Service asks that none be hauled in from elsewhere, to keep tree-killing pests from spreading. There is drinking water and a flush toilet, but no picnic table and no trash pickup. Horses and pack animals are not allowed, and the other administrative buildings on the site are closed to guests. Arriving parties call the McCall Ranger District 24 to 48 hours ahead for the lock combination.

Several trails leave from the campground next door: Nethker Creek Trail #143, Jeanette Creek Trail #140, and the Burgdorf-1 and Burgdorf-2 trails, #175 and #176. They carry hikers and mountain bikers, and the roads are open to OHV riding. The Secesh River nearby is fished. Burgdorf Hot Springs, the Warren Guard Station, and the old mining towns of Secesh and Warren all lie within driving distance.

Warm Springs, Resort, Burgdorf

The guard station takes its name from the hot springs community up the road, and that community took its name from a marriage. Merle Wells of the Idaho State Historical Society prepared a National Register of Historic Places nomination in February 1972. In it, Fred C. Burgdorf is a German emigrant who came to the United States as a teenager and reached Warrens in 1864. In 1866, while working in the area, he heard of the springs from a Chinese miner. The place was then called Warm Springs. Burgdorf settled on the land and renamed it Resort. The Harris family, who describe themselves as fourth-generation owners of the springs, give 1865 as the year he settled.

Burgdorf built a hotel and ran a post office there during the mining boom. Interest in the Thunder Mountain country began to grow after 1898, and his location on the route from Grangeville to the mines “proved to be fortunate,” in the nomination’s words. By 1902 a major gold rush to Thunder Mountain had built up traffic enough to justify enlarging the Burgdorf Hotel. In 1902 he married Jannette Foronsard, a singer from Denver, and it was she who changed the name Resort to Burgdorf. When she died in 1923, he sold his interests and retired to Weiser. The Harris family names the buyer as James Harris.

During the Depression the CCC built a forest road up French Creek through Burgdorf, which, the nomination says, made the place easier for travelers to reach. The hotel ran until 1964. The 1972 form describes log buildings in a valley among tall pines:

• a two-story lodge of more than 20 rooms, with an eight-foot-wide fireplace and massive andirons in the main living room;
• original furniture made from trees with unusually large knots, worked into the pieces;
• log resort cabins scattered around the grounds;
• two natural warm springs enclosed by logs.

The smaller pool, 8 by 12 feet, had a bath house beside it. The larger, 20 by 40 feet, ran cooler because its broad surface let more water evaporate. “The country around Burgdorf has not changed much over the years,” the form noted. The site was entered in the National Register on April 14, 1972.

Lightning, then a renovation

The guard station appears in the record as a former Forest Service working station. On Aug. 4, 2019, lightning started the Nethker Fire. By Aug. 6 the Payette National Forest had evacuated all of Burgdorf. Spot fires jumped both Burgdorf Road and the Warren Wagon Road, closing them, and one burned about half a mile south of the hot springs. CBS 2 News put the fire at 1,000 acres, down from an earlier estimate of 2,500 after more advanced mapping. The station listed about 20 threatened structures, among them the hot springs, a historic sheepherders’ cabin and the Burgdorf Guard Station. Crews were hoping for cooler weather and weekend rain, and InciWeb gave the fire the potential to burn into October.

Funding from the Great American Outdoors Act later paid for renovations at the historic guard station. A Forest Service photograph caption, written as the work neared completion, said the station would be used as a recreation rental in 2024. The Payette National Forest records the cabin as fully renovated that year.