Peavy Cabin is a survivor.

Over the 87 years the log structure has stood beside the North Fork of the John Day River west of Baker City, the cabin has emerged unscathed from one of the bigger wildfires in the Elkhorn Mountains in more than a century.

It shrugged off a tree that toppled onto its roof.

Peavy Cabin’s most recent threat, though, just before Halloween 2020, came from inside rather than outside.

And if not for a handy garden sprayer, the historic one-room building might finally have succumbed.

Three hunters were staying in the cabin the night of Oct. 27, said Jay Moore, recreation specialist for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

Two other members from the group were staying in an RV parked outside.

The trio, who had kindled a blaze in the cabin’s freestanding woodstove (there is also a fireplace on the opposite side of the single room) to ward off temperatures that dipped into the teens, awakened in the night to see flames on the ceiling, Moore said.

A later examination showed that the fire started when heat spread from gaps in the mortar used to build the cinderblock chimney, which is connected to the stove via a metal pipe, he said.

The crumbling mortar, between the chimney and the cabin’s log wall, would not have been visible without partially disassembling the structure, Moore said.

He said that as far as Forest Service officials can determine, the chimney is original to the cabin, which was built in 1934 by George Wilcox Peavy, then dean of the School of Forestry at Oregon State University.

The hunters immediately doused the fire in the woodstove.

Then they started hauling water from the river, which is a couple of hundred feet from the cabin, to extinguish the flames.

“It’s to their credit that the cabin still stands,” Moore said on Wednesday, Jan. 20.

The hunters also had a portable garden sprayer in their RV. It had a flexible hose that made it possible to spray water into areas that they couldn’t have reached with buckets, Moore said.

The hunters worked the rest of the night to stop the fire, he said.

“They were quite weary” by the morning of Oct. 28, Moore said.

Due to their efforts, the damage was mainly superficial.

(Moore said he didn’t have the hunters’ names. Nor did Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort, which manages the cabin during the rental season.)

Moore said the flames blackened sections of the ceiling and well, and part of a kitchen cabinet.

But there was no structural damage.

Moore said Forest Service employees used epoxy to fill a small hole, about the size of a quarter, on the outside wall. They’ll make a more permanent repair, and paint the section of wall, this spring.

No one was hurt in the fire.

Moore said Peavy Cabin, which has been open to renters during the summer for more than 20 years, survived the 1996 Sloans Ridge fire, which burned about 10,000 acres.

The fire burned on both sides of the North Fork valley, but firefighters saved the cabin by wrapping it with protective fabric and dousing it with fire-suppression foam.

About 15 years ago a tree fell squarely on the cabin, but without causing significant damage.

“It’s been through a lot in the past,” Moore said of the cabin. “It’s had a long, eventful life.”

He said the cabin won’t require a lot of work to prepare it for the 2021 rental season, which usually starts July 1 due to lingering snow in the Elkhorns. The cabin is at an elevation of about 5,900 feet.

Workers will need to clean up the burned areas, but Moore said the plan is to not paint or otherwise cover the blackened logs, leaving those scars, which don’t weaken the cabin, as a sort of historical artifact.

The main task for the Wallowa-Whitman this spring will be replacing the woodstove with a propane heater insert, which will be installed in the fireplace, Moore said.

The cabin is so small that the propane heater will provide sufficient heat, he said.

Removing the woodstove will also create more floor space.

Cabin’s restorer pleased to hear his handiwork survived

Larry Bilyeu had a particular reason to be thankful that Peavy Cabin endured yet another threat.

Bilyeu, a former Baker City resident who lives in Prineville, restored Peavy Cabin in the early 1990s while he was working for the Wallowa-Whitman. He said the chimney looked to be original.

Among other things, Bilyeu used jacks to lift the structure so he could replace rotting logs with lodgepole pine logs he obtained from a mill in Prairie City. Bilyeu, who retired from the Forest Service in 2006, said the cabin rests on a foundation of locally sourced rocks.

Bilyeu, who attended training to learn how to restore historic cabins, said Peavy was his first project.

“I enjoyed doing that,” he said in a recent phone interview.

Bilyeu later restored Boundary Guard Station near Granite, as well guard stations in Idaho and Utah.

“It’s been through a lot in the past. It’s had a long, eventful life.”

— Jay Moore, Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, talking about Peavy Cabin