Lost Horse Cabin

The last gate on the way to Lost Horse Cabin is green and stands on the right side of Anderson Road. A combination opens it. The code comes in the renter’s confirmation letter, and the same code opens the cabin door. Past the gate a track runs 0.3 miles to the cabin, which sits along a small intermittent creek at 5,200 feet in the Divide Mountains of the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. Only the current renter may drive that last stretch. There is room at the cabin for three full-sized pickups.

Bunks, lanterns, and a Monarch range

Inside are two sets of bunk beds with mattresses and four cots, enough for eight people. A wood stove gives heat. A Monarch cookstove stands in the cabin, and a small propane stove sits beside it. The propane stove and the lanterns come without fuel or mantles, so guests carry in their own small cylinders. The Forest Service also supplies a table and chairs, dishes, utensils, some cookware, cleaning supplies, an axe, and a snow shovel. Firewood may be on hand, but the agency does not promise it. The outhouse nearby has a vault toilet.

The cabin has no electricity, no running water, and no indoor plumbing. Every drop for drinking, cooking, and washing is hauled in, and every scrap of food and trash is hauled out. No stores or services lie anywhere near. The country around is coniferous forest of mixed fir and pine. Black and grizzly bears, mule deer and white-tailed deer, elk, mountain lions, and many upland birds live in it, and nothing edible is to be left outside the door.

Four miles from the Divide

The route from Helena runs north on I-15, then west on Montana Highway 279 through Canyon Creek. It continues on gravel up Little Prickley Pear Road and Lost Horse Creek Road to a Y, where Anderson Road branches right. In winter the plows stop at that Y. The last 1.7 miles go by foot, ski, snowshoe, dog sled, or snowmobile, and the area is open to snowmobiles from December 2 to May 15. The topographic map of the area has a flaw: it shows a straight line leaving the cabin at 45 degrees to the east. That line does not exist on the ground. The real access road lies due south.

As the crow flies, the Continental Divide is four miles west. The country to the west and north is sparsely roaded and suited to travel off trail. To the south and east, an extensive road system draws trucks and off-highway vehicles in summer and fall, and visitors drive it to look at old mining relics. That ground falls in Lewis and Clark County. A federal mineral record lists a gold occurrence on a Lost Horse Creek near Marysville, in the Marysville Mining District. The record says no mining of significance took place there, only routine claim maintenance after the discovery.

Mergenthaler Cabin, acquired 2017

Recreation.gov lists the place under two other names, Lost Horse Creek Cabin and Mergenthaler Cabin. The Forest Service acquired it in 2017 and added it to the rental roster of the Helena Ranger District. The pages do not say who built it or when.

Wild Montana calls it “a relatively recent addition to the Forest Service’s rental system.” The group places the cabin just east of the Continental Divide and the proposed Nevada Mountain Wilderness Area. On a Monday, July 27, Wild Montana’s Wild Divide Chapter brought volunteers out under leader Alan Wintersteen. They met by Sunflower Bakery on Euclid Avenue in Helena and drove right up to the cabin for a day of maintenance, deep cleaning, and inventory. The plan allowed them to sleep in the bunks that night and finish the work Tuesday morning.