Deer Creek Cabin (MT)

A carved fish hangs beside the front door of the Deer Creek cabin, alongside the government signs. Inside is one room. It holds a wood cook stove, a wood heating stove, a table with chairs, a double bed, and a set of bunk beds with no mattresses. Clear panels set into the roof let daylight onto the kitchen and dining area, where a sink and cupboards hold utensils enough to feed a group. The Forest Service stocks basic cooking supplies, a propane lantern, a propane cookstove, an axe, a maul, a bucket, and a shovel. Guests carry in the propane canisters, the bedding, the flashlights, and the drinking water. There is no water or electricity, and water from the creek must be treated. The door stays locked. Renters open the combination lock by lining up the numbers and squeezing the handle and base together until it pops open.

Outside are a campfire ring and an outhouse with a pit toilet. A corral and a partially fenced pasture hold stock, and hay brought in must be certified weed-free. The cabin sleeps four and is rented through the Custer Gallatin National Forest for stays of up to five nights, in any season.

The cabin stands in the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains. The Billings Gazette puts it about 30 miles southeast of Big Timber, and Recreation.gov puts it approximately 30 miles south. Blackened trees from a 2006 forest fire still line the nearby hillsides. Bear, moose, antelope, elk, and deer use the country, and anglers fish the creek for trout. In fall the area draws big-game and bird hunters.

Three trails down to Lower Deer Creek

No road reaches the door. Three trails do, and by the Gazette’s 2018 count they run from 3.5 to 5.2 miles, with about 1,000 feet of gain and loss.

From the west, Lower Deer Creek Road, Forest Service Road 482, runs 16.2 miles from the Interstate 90 frontage road to the Placer Gulch Trailhead. From there Placer Gulch Trail 256 covers 5.2 miles to the cabin on foot, on horseback, or by off-highway vehicle 50 inches wide or less.

From the east, two trails leave West Bridger Creek Road. Jim’s Gulch Trail 129 is for foot and horse travel and runs 4 miles. It follows Jim’s Gulch for about a mile, turns sharply north, and climbs to the ridge. At the divide it drops steeply to Lower Deer Creek and joins Trail 5, which runs upstream about 1.5 miles to the cabin. A quarter mile past that trailhead, the Tie Cutter Trailhead opens an ATV route that climbs to a ridge and drops into the same creek.

The last half mile of road to the eastern trailheads is primitive and not recommended for low-clearance vehicles. On the creek bottom, hikers ford Lower Deer Creek numerous times. In spring the crossings run from 6 inches to several feet deep.

In winter the cabin is reached on snowshoes, skis, or snowmobiles. Snowmobilers leave their trailers down on the Iron Mountain Road, and the roads to the trailheads may not be plowed at all. The Gazette’s outdoors editor, Brett French, snowshoed in on March 26, 2011, and was photographed resting on the porch. A photograph of his from a later winter shows snowshoe tracks climbing through the burned forest toward the cabin.

Sonny and Donald Todd

Sonny Todd was 15 years old in 1953 when he and his father, Donald, began building the cabin. The Gazette reports that they finished six years later. Recreation.gov gives the finish as 1960. The Todd family used the place as a retreat while they grazed cattle on federal land in summer and hunted in fall.

The Gallatin National Forest took ownership in 1993 and opened the cabin to public rental. The cabin has since survived two forest fires, and the Gazette ran its 2011 story under the headline “Cabin endures, despite 2 fires, to provide public retreat.”