Cabin Restoration

Land Guardians Adam Winters and Niko Helm are starting a project to help restore the many historic hunting and trapping cabins across the Traditional Territory.

Work started this summer with Tarfu Creek Cabin. The cabin is on the west side of the Atlin Rd. Originally built by C/TFN Elder Johnnie Johns, the interior of the cabin is covered in the names and dates of visitors stretching back to at least the 1960s.

“It was a trapping cabin and a cabin where people sought refuge while they travelled the old wagon road that went to Atlin,” said Winters.

Winters said, for years afterwards, it was used as a “trading post,” where people would drop off items they wanted to leave for someone else, and then take something they could use for themselves. In recent years, he says, it’s been more of a “leaving post,” for people to shed less useful items.

This summer the Land Guardians have been making some significant repairs to the structure, and hope it will be a historic site people can visit, with signage in Lingít and English. 

“We want people to take pride in it,” he said. “By doing this, we’re hoping to encourage people to keep the site clean.”

Thanks to Winters and Helm, with the help of a rotating crew of summer student workers, the cabin is looking better than ever. So far, the team has jacked the floor up off the ground and done an extensive site clean-up. 

Winters and Helm are already planning to do more cabin restoration work on the site. They’re also planning a similar restoration on the Rose Lake cabin, another of Johns’ sites, which is currently in need of major repairs. They say it could also one day be a rest stop or campsite for Land Guardians and others working and travelling on the land.

“There are just so many old cabins on the land everywhere,” said Helm. “A lot of them have names and dates, events, visitors, written in them. It’s a lot of history and it’s something that’s worth protecting.”