Horse Heaven Cabin

Horse Heaven Cabin stands at the edge of an open meadow at 7,100 feet in central Idaho. Coniferous forest covers most of the country around it. The cabin is one room, 16 by 18 feet. Two built-in bunk beds sleep up to four people on sleeping pads the Forest Service provides. Inside are a table and chairs, a wooden bench, a propane cook stove, a propane lantern, and a wood stove for heat. The cabin also holds pots, pans, a coffee pot, and basic cooking and eating utensils. Firewood is kept outside, and a splitting maul is kept inside. A fire pit and an outhouse with a vault toilet stand near the cabin.

Guests bring the rest. That includes propane for the stove and lantern, which the reservation notices specify as a small canister. It also includes bedding, food, matches, flashlights, garbage bags, and water for drinking, cooking and washing. The Forest Service page says a small stream may run nearby in summer, and the reservation notices call it a spring. Either way, its water must be boiled or treated before use. Dishes are cleaned, dried and put away, and all trash leaves with the guest. Rodents can get into the building, and the reservation page warns of Hantavirus.

The door is locked with a combination. A week before arrival, guests call the West Fork Ranger District in Darby, Montana, for the code. The cabin is rented from mid-July through September at $25 a night, for no more than five consecutive nights. There is no cell phone coverage.

The Magruder Corridor Road

The cabin is in Idaho, but it is administered from Montana by the West Fork district of the Bitterroot National Forest. From Darby, the route goes south 4 miles on Highway 93, then up the West Fork Road past the 14-mile marker. It then turns west onto the Nez Perce Road, also called the Magruder Corridor Road, Forest Road 468. Thirty-five miles of pavement and one-lane gravel lead to the junction with road 6223 near Magruder Crossing Campground. From there the route crosses the Selway River and climbs 22 more miles of steep one-lane gravel to a sign reading “Trail #28 Sabe Cr 10.” The last 300 yards into the cabin are rough and rocky.

From the Idaho side, the approach leaves Elk City on Highway 14 and Forest Road 222. It then follows Forest Road 468 east for about 36 miles. High-clearance vehicles are required either way, and parking at the cabin holds two. Trees fall across the corridor road often, and the Forest Service tells guests to carry a saw. Horses and other livestock are not allowed at the cabin.

The road forms the boundary between the 1.2-million-acre Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and the 2.3-million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. Bicycles and motor vehicles stop at the wilderness lines, and hiking and horseback trails lead in from the road. The cabin lies near the southern Nez Perce Trail. Native American tribes used that trail as a seasonal migration and subsistence route between eastern Oregon and Idaho and the buffalo country of eastern Montana.

Mountain lions and gray wolves live in the surrounding country. So do coyote, fox, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, moose, deer and black bears. Hunters come for big and small game under Idaho and Montana licenses.

A fireman’s cabin from Camp F-156

The Civilian Conservation Corps built the cabin in 1939 for use as a fireman’s cabin. The University of Idaho’s Civilian Conservation Corps in Idaho collection lists it among the CCC’s surviving structures. The collection assigns it to Camp Horse Heaven, F-156, and gives Darby, Montana, as the nearest town. It holds no photograph of the cabin.

Fire has continued to come to the cabin. Wildland fires have burned around it in recent years and in years past. The reservation notices warn that it sits near an area recently burned by wildfire.

Salmon Mountain Lookout is less than two miles’ walk away. The walk passes high-mountain larch and whitebark pine and looks out over the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. The Forest Service lists the lookout as historic and still active.