Mount Hood guard cabin may be added to National Register of Historic Places

By Garth Guibord

The Sandy Post, Mar 17, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

Jan Tomlinson / contributed photo

The Upper Sandy Guard Station Cabin sits off a trail in the Mount Hood National Forest and may be added to the National Register of Historic Places later this year.

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Within the Bull Run watershed and just a short hike off a trail sits a cabin in disrepair – a structure built in 1935 to prevent trespassers from wandering farther into the watershed that supplies Portland its water.

Known as the Upper Sandy Guard Station Cabin, it soon may be added to the National Register of Historic Places, after the Oregon State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation approved its nomination at a Feb. 27 meeting.

“I have faith that its listing, hopefully within a month or two, will give it the prominence that will allow us to move forward in stabilization and ultimately rehabilitation,” said Rick McClure, Heritage Program manager for the Mount Hood National Forest. “If we don’t do stabilization right away, we’re going to lose it.”

Cabin construction

Jan Tomlinson, who previously served as a forest archaeologist for the Mount Hood National Forest, researched the cabin for the nomination application. She expected to discover that the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which worked on various projects throughout the area including Timberline Lodge, was the force behind the cabin’s construction.

Instead, it was part of work done under the Emergency Relief Appropriations (ERA) Act, which took an older population who didn’t qualify for the CCC but had skills and worked for the Forest Service through local welfare boards.

McClure estimated approximately 750 historical buildings in Oregon were built by the CCC, but the lack of ERA buildings means the cabin is unique.

“It’s one of the few buildings on Forest Service land in Oregon that we can point to and say it was built by the ERA,” McClure said.

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