Visitors can learn the fascinating story of Oregon’s most famous and tallest mountain year round at the Mt. Hood Cultural Center & Museum in Government Camp. But one day a year, a handful of historic log cabins, made by a family of self-taught carpenters and tucked into picturesque forest settings and along streams, are open to tour.
This year’s self-guided Steiner Cabins Tour takes place on Aug. 13 around Welches with stops at Depression-era dwellings and the newly restored 1937 St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
All the log structures on the tour were built in the Oregon Rustic style by Henry Steiner, his wife, Mollie, and their 13 children.
With little money and no electricity, the resourceful family used hand tools, pulleys and Old World woodworking techniques to craft cabins made of trees and stone found in the forest.
A limited number of event tickets will go on sale at 8 a.m. Friday, July 1, at mthoodmuseum.org. Tickets are $35 each for museum members and $40 for nonmembers. In past years, tickets have sold out in a few hours.
To pace out the 300 participants, the Aug. 13 event will have staggered starting times: 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Organizers say the website shopping cart will encourage paying for tickets with a PayPal account, but purchasers may pay with a credit card by following the instructions.
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The summer tour is a fundraiser for the nonprofit Mt. Hood Cultural Center & Museum, which is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Interpretive exhibits, educational programming and lectures explain the early exploration, pioneer history and the “remarkable individuals who helped shape the history of the mountain,” according to the museum’s website.
In all, Henry Steiner and the eldest of his children, John, built 100 cabins, two churches and eight United States Forest Service summer homes between 1927 and 1952, says Lloyd Musser, museum curator and longtime tour organizer.
Henry and John also contributed to the construction of the 1936 Timberline Lodge, which was built by local craftsmen employed during the Depression by the Works Progress Administration. The Mount Hood landmark is on the national historic register.
Most of the Steiners’ durable cabins have survived decades of snow-pounding winters and fires. Some of the vacation cabins have been owned by families for generations. Many have been restored, and their values have soared.
“One small, but well-maintained Steiner just sold for $575,000,” says Musser. “We are really excited about the quality of the restoration work new buyers are undertaking.”
Some of the cabins are vacation rentals, including one recently restored that will be on the tour.
The Steiners were proud of their functional and economically assembled homes, says Musser. But they also used their hand tools to painstakingly sculpt details from the materials’ natural beauty, character and curves.
Henry’s wife, Molly, and the smaller children peeled bark off large Douglas fir logs for cabin walls and collected small, twisted trees to use for rocking chair bases and table legs. Gnarled tree roots were transformed into tubular doorknobs, curtain rods and clothes pegs.
Logs split into half-moon shapes with the flat surface facing up were used for the staircase steps and handrails bend to the floor.
The frugal family reportedly only purchased sinks, tubs, hinges and window panes.
In addition to cabins, the Steiners built trussed log bridges, barns and a 1938 log house, called “Fogelbo,” constructed of Douglas fir and cedar in a wooded patch of Portland’s Garden Home neighborhood. Nordic Northwest built its cultural center, Nordia House, on land adjacent to Fogelbo House, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072
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