Gooseberry Administrative Site Cabins

Fifty beds in the aspens

County Road 640 leaves Interstate 70 at the Gooseberry Road exit, number 63, and runs south as a two-lane paved road for about ten miles. Just past Gooseberry Campground, on the right side of the road, stand three bunk cabins, a recreation hall, a kitchen, and a bathhouse. They sit in the Gooseberry drainage of central Utah, in the Fishlake National Forest, at about 8,000 feet. A Forest Service page gives the elevation in one place as 7,900 feet and warns visitors to come prepared for bad weather. Dense stands of aspen shade the buildings and turn color in the fall. Parking is on gravel and dirt. The Forest Service puts the site about 19 miles southeast of Salina. Recreation.gov makes it 18.

The site is rented as a single unit, from mid-June through the beginning of September, to family reunions, church and scout groups, youth camps, and other gatherings. As many as 250 people may use the grounds, but there are only fifty single beds, each with a mattress, in the three bunk cabins. One cabin has propane heat. Guests bring their own bedding, dishes, cookware, towels, and insect repellent. They also clean the buildings during their stay and again before they leave, because there is no maid service. A volunteer host lives on the site to answer questions. The buildings are historic, and the Forest Service notes that they are not very accessible for people with disabilities and that the stairs are steep and slick when wet.

The kitchen, the hall, and the fire circle

Meals are cooked on a large propane range with an oven. The kitchen also has three small propane refrigerators, three sinks with hot water, a preparation and serving area, and two grills outdoors. Picnic tables stand near the kitchen. The recreation hall holds tables, chairs, and a fireplace. Outside there is a small amphitheater with a fire circle, and the firewood is provided. The bathhouse has flush toilets, sinks, and showers.

A propane generator supplies electricity and lights for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple more in the evening. For the rest of the day the buildings run without power. There is no telephone at the site and no emergency service nearer than town. Quiet hours run from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Mountain Time.

The country around the site is used for fishing, hiking, biking, horseback riding, wildlife watching, and off-highway vehicle riding. The Great Western Trail passes nearby, and two of its trailheads are close to the cabins. Off-road vehicles and horses are not allowed on the site itself.

Summer quarters for rangers, 1907 to 1960

Before the cabins housed reunions, they were the Forest Service’s summer headquarters for this part of the forest, from 1907 to 1960. According to the Fishlake National Forest, its guard stations once served only administrative purposes. Before modern vehicles, rangers spent their summers at these stations doing forestry, rangeland monitoring, fire-weather work, lookout duty, and other jobs. The cabins and their outbuildings housed employees, horses, and primitive vehicles. A 1999 Deseret News account described the same system across the agency. Because the Forest Service had no fast way to move people in and out of the back country, it built stations, lookouts, and housing for crews who fought fires, built roads, prepared timber sales, and ran the forest.

Better vehicles and improved roads made the stations less necessary. Some Forest Service buildings were removed, and others were kept for their historical importance.

A $300 night in 1999

On January 9, 1999, Reed L. Madsen, a Deseret News correspondent writing from Salina, reported that Fishlake National Forest would open the Gooseberry Administrative Site to the public the following summer. It could take groups of up to fifty people in three buildings, with a kitchen and showers. Reservations required a nonrefundable $100 deposit, and the rate was $300 a night. Ellen Daniels of the Richfield Ranger District told the paper that the public had expressed interest over the years in using some of the old structures as summer retreats. Because the agency no longer needed the buildings and had smaller budgets, it looked for new ways to use and preserve them. “The recreational cabin concept was born,” the article said. The same piece called the site “extremely popular” with large groups and noted its easy automobile access a few miles south of the Gooseberry ramp in Salina Canyon.

Gooseberry is one of four Fishlake guard stations now reserved through Recreation.gov. The others are Aquarius, Big Flat, and Mt. Terrill. The Richfield Ranger District still manages the site, and the overnight rate is still $300.