Archive All Issues October 2014

CABIN FEVER

It's not unusual for fire crews to uncover archaeological sites in our national forests, but the discovery of an old cabin during the Slide Fire brought rare attention from the Los Angeles Times, the Archae- ological Conservancy and an insatiable public fed by social media.

Featured in the October 2014 Issue of Arizona Highways

With the Slide Fire burning nearby, firefighters work to protect the remains of a cabin discovered in a remote area of Oak Creek Canyon.

BY: Noah Austin

AS FIREFIGHTERS BATTLED THE Slide Fire, which ultimately scorched more than 21,000 acres in Oak Creek Canyon earlier this year, the Engine 551 fire crew made an unusual discovery: an old, overgrown trail that wasn't on any maps. It led down to a spring in an area known as Barney Pasture.The crew's leader, Leo Holley, showed the trail to U.S. Forest Service archaeologist Jeremy Haines. As they surveyed the site, Holley noticed something nearby. “Hey, that looks like a cabin foundation down there!” he told Haines.

Haines knew right away he was looking at a piece of history.Today, not much of the small cabin is left, but one corner is still partially standing. The fire crew dug lines around the site, removed nearby trees and covered the cabin remains with a fireproof blanket to protect them from the fire.

Part of the reason the cabin site remained hidden for so long was that years of fire suppression in the area had left Barney Pasture severely overgrown with vegetation. In addition, many of the ridges and “finger canyons” leading into the West Fork of Oak Creek are remote and little explored, Haines says, although an archaeological crew was in the area a few years ago and failed to spot the cabin.“To me, that's even more exciting — to find something that's so difficult to see,” Haines says. “These are unwritten pages of our collective American history. They reside on the landscape for people to discover, interpret and appreciate.” So, who built the cabin? And how old is it? For now, those questions remain unanswered, but it may have been built by Jim Barney, who laid claim to the area in the 1800s and for whom Barney Pasture is named. According to Donna Ashworth's 1991 book Biography of a Small Mountain, a history of the Flagstaff area, Barney sold his Oak Creek holdings in 1898 and moved to Southeastern Arizona. There's no record of who, if anyone, inhabited the land after that.

As for the cabin's age, Haines retrieved an ax-hewn log from the site to have it dated. The Engine 551 crew took the log to the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research in Tucson while heading back to its home base on the Coronado National Forest. Further archaeological testing is also being considered for the site, Haines says.

It's not unheard of for fire crews to stumble upon archaeological sites such as the Barney Pasture cabin, but what surprised Haines about this find was the flood of interest from the public — much of it driven by social-media updates about the Slide Fire's growth.

“We protect a lot of resources, and sometimes you wonder how much the public really values these places,” Haines says. “It's been really interesting and rewarding to have such public interest in what we found.” AH For more information about Oak Creek Canyon, call the Coconino National Forest's Flagstaff Ranger District at 928-526-0866 or visit www.fs.usda.gov/coconino.