Editor’s note: James Olmsted has written this history of the Gibson Cabin on the upper St. Croix River and shared it with St. Croix 360 to be published for the first time. As you will read, he has a long personal connection to the cabin and its owners before the National Park Service, and has done extensive research about it.

Olmsted lives near Madison, Wis. and has been recreating in Douglas County for almost 40 years. He is retired from the nursery and landscaping business and is currently pursuing a PhD in history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, studying the logistics and infrastructure of consumerism, tourism, and vacation that served the Twin Ports and Twin Cities wealthy elite in early 20th-century northwestern Wisconsin.

Olmsted is a 2024 Wisconsin Humanities Fellow and is writing a book on the Gibson Cabin. His research is supported by his family, the Gibson family, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Gordon-Wascott Historical Society, and the National Park Service. Thank you to James and all his supporters for preserving and sharing this story.

Few people consider how National Parks come into existence. Many assume they have always been there. Wherever National Parks and Riverways were established, people and properties were already there: houses, farms, seasonal cabins, roads, pastures, businesses, and sometimes whole settlements were in the way. Whenever a National Park was designated, it forced the removal of local property owners through eminent domain by the federal government.

The Gibson cabin’s history serves as a case study to examine the dynamic between the National Park Service and a property “in the way.” Although the Gibson cabin was nearly lost due to eminent domain, stewards helped save the cabin, which is one of the last examples of the early twentieth-century vintage, rustic-style log lodges that characterized the shoreline of the Upper St. Croix River before the National Park Service (NPS) removed them to create the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway in 1968. 

The historic Gibson cabin sits below the Gordon Dam near the beginning of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, seven miles west of the Town of Gordon, in northwestern Wisconsin’s Douglas County. The cabin is uniquely located at the intersection of two national park units, the North Country National Scenic Hiking Trail and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. The Gibson cabin is an integral part of Douglas County folklore and its connection with the people of Gordon. The only way to visit the remote cabin is to hike the North Country Trail (NCT) one mile east from West Mail Road, hike the NCT for 2.5 miles going west from the Gordon Dam, or take a canoe and paddle down the St. Croix River. 

In the spring of 1912, the last logs went through the Gordon Dam and floated down the St. Croix River to the lumber mills in Stillwater, Minnesota, signaling the end of the white pine logging era and the age of the river logging drives. Knowing this, in 1914, William Mackey of the Mackey Lumber Company sold his forty acres on the St. Croix River to a small group of businessmen. While many people came in and out of the partnership between 1914 and 1917, the rustic-style cabin was built in 1915 as a summer vacation home under the direction of David Stocking and his wife, Ada. Meanwhile, David’s friend Ken Scott promptly bought all the other parcels on both sides of the St. Croix River from West Mail Road to the east up to the Gordon Dam. Ken later built a rustic-style lodge a mile west of the Gibson cabin by Scott’s Bridge at the intersection of the St. Croix and Moose Rivers. Today, it’s called the “Scott Rapids” primitive campsite. 

Captains of shipping

David and Ada Stocking’s cabin became the Gibson cabin. While the Stockings were the primary owners, the Gibson cabin was built for David Stocking, Fred Houghton, Gib Douglas, and H.S. Newell. The four men were Duluth industrialists, grain traders, brokers, vessel owners, and fellow Duluth Board of Trade members who made their money from the Lake Superior shipping industry. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Twin Ports entrepreneurs often formed shipping conglomerates of owner-operator-managers. Enjoying the success of their various facets of trade, these grain tycoons became friends and business partners and enjoyed fishing trips in Douglas County, which led to the cabin’s construction. 

The cabin was designed and supervised by a regionally acclaimed architect and master log builder team and built by local lumberjacks recruited by William Gordon. The workforce camped at the construction site and built the cabin from cedar trees harvested on-site. The Stocking and Scott cabins were compounds, not just cabins. The large two-story cedar log homes had garages, boathouses, piers, outhouses, wood sheds, ice houses, and the Scott compound even had a guest cabin. The Stocking’s forty acres straddled the river and had multiple islands, including one they named Elizabeth’s Island, where they built a log boathouse on shore and had a footbridge over the river to a gazebo for their daughter, Elizabeth. 

For many years, the Stockings traveled from their home in Duluth to spend summer vacations on the St. Croix. They had maids, entertained guests, and hosted family reunions, cocktail hour formals, and bridge parties for high society ladies. At the same time, the cabin served as a fishing and hunting lodge where wealthy men displayed their masculinity by fishing the river for smallmouth bass and highly prized trout. In the fall, they hunted for deer, grouse, and ducks. The first historical mention of the cabin was written by David Stocking’s father, the Reverend Charles Stocking in 1916: 

“For the last Sunday in August 1916, and the first three Sundays in September we were given a vacation, going up to Duluth in one of the commercial steamers of the G.A. Tomlinson Company, of which company our son David, after fourteen years as a bookkeeper and manager was now a member… At our son’s lodge over in Wisconsin on the St. Croix river we found excellent fishing, bathing, and sleeping. It was a family reunion never to be forgotten. The father and mother with their two daughters from Willoughby Ridge, the oldest son and his wife with their three children from Duluth; the Doctor son and his wife and their two daughters from St. Louis, all gathered about the long table, loaded with black bass and speckled trout fresh from river and creek, and all other tempting edibles that the three experienced housewives might provide. It was well for us to sing: ‘Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.’ The biggest fish was voted to Lyman, the successful angler, but there was an abundant supply for all. “

In 1929, David Stocking greatly overextended his long-time successful shipping empire when the grain crop failed, and then the stock market crashed. Between 1929 and 1933, David and Ada Stocking lost their shipping businesses, house, farm, and ten-acre plot in Palm Beach, Florida. The Stockings didn’t lose the cabin because, in 1925, Ken Scott bought the Gibson cabin and transferred the ownership to Ada Stocking and Agnes Newell. 

Great Depression refuge

David and Ada Stocking had three children, Elizabeth, Harvey, and David L. By 1930, David was 59 years old and his children were adults, so David and Ada moved to the cabin and lived there for about two years during the Great Depression. At that time, their son, Harvey installed a generator in the garage and wired the cabin for electricity. David and Ada returned to Duluth after 1932 but never recovered their wealth, however, they still regularly used and loved the cabin.

In 1940, after Agnes Newell died, David and Ada regained sole ownership, so they sold their remaining belongings in Duluth and moved to the cabin where they lived from 1940 until May 1943. On May 8th, 1943, the generator in the garage caught fire, and the garage burned down. That event essentially ended their marriage. Ada left to visit friends in Milwaukee and never came back. She sold the cabin to her daughter, Elizabeth, in 1946 and died in Milwaukee in 1951. David suffered from growing mental illnesses generated by the emotional and financial stress of losing his wealth and status and he spent the rest of his life under supervised care; he died in 1952 at a veteran’s hospital in Michigan. 

Keeping it in the family name, Elizabeth and Charlie Gibson bought the cabin in 1946. They lived in Rhinelander, Wisconsin where Charlie Gibson owned an insurance agency. They had three children, Liz, Jean, and Charlie Jr., and they loved the cabin, spent as much time there as possible, and continued the Stocking family traditions, which included the cabin’s dichotomy of being a hunting lodge and a high society place. Their daughter Liz (Gibson) Becker recalled to NPS in a 1997 interview that she remembered when she was a child growing up in Rhinelander, that their summers were spent alternating between two weeks at the cabin and then two weeks back at home.

While Jean and Charlie Jr. never had children, Liz Gibson married a man named Gordie Becker; they lived in Madison where Liz was a teacher and Gordie was a developer. They had four children, but three of them only visited the cabin twice and it was when they were young. Liz and Gordie’s son, Jeff, was the only child from the fourth generation who regularly used the cabin.

Federal fight

In the 1960s, Minnesota U.S. Senator Walter Mondale and Wisconsin U.S. Senator and past governor, Gaylord Nelson, made the push for the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. As environmental awareness and interest grew, America’s most scenic rivers needed protection from further development and contamination. Enacted in 1968, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act designated the St. Croix River as one of the country’s first wild and scenic rivers.

A major catalyst for the creation of the new St. Croix National Scenic Riverway was Northern States Power’s gift of over 25,000 acres of land along the St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers. In exchange, Northern States Power was allowed to install a power plant near Stillwater, Minnesota to provide electricity to the Twin Cities. This left another 25,000 acres of land the federal government needed to acquire from state, county, and private landowners. Starting in 1968, the National Park Service used eminent domain to purchase privately held land in the new National Scenic Riverway and remove all buildings to recreate a sense of wilderness along the St. Croix. 

As a result of the creation of the National Scenic Riverway, the Gibsons were forced to sell their property in the 1970s. Four generations of the family had loved the cabin so they fought the federal government for six years (1968-1974) but ultimately settled on a 25-year lease of their cabin from the park service; the lease began in January 1974 and expired in January 1999. The forced sale of the cabin in 1974 created pain for the family. Charlie Gibson never forgave NPS or Gaylord Nelson for taking his land and compromising his family’s legacy.

The Gibson family struggled with the disconnect of using a place they loved and cared about for generations, knowing their family’s ownership would sunset in 1999. The family believed the building would be torn down or burned to allow the land to return to the wild. According to her son, Jeff, Liz (Gibson) Becker never visited the cabin after the 1970s; she had beautiful memories of the cabin from the 1930s through the 1960s which she did not want to compromise by seeing the cabin in its decline. By 1974, Charlie and Elizabeth’s grandson, Jeff Becker, reached adulthood. He was a great woodsman and loved hunting grouse and deer along the St. Croix. Jeff visited the cabin frequently, spent a lot of time with his grandparents there, and gradually took over the cabin’s maintenance. 

Latter days

In 1986, I was introduced to the Gibson cabin for deer hunting season. I can still visualize the silhouette of the guns leaning in the windows against the lamplight at night. That year Jeff invited his friend, my father, Jim Olmsted, Sr., and his sons to hunt at the cabin. 1986 was also the year that Charlie Gibson died and we spread his ashes in the river at deer camp. Elizabeth Gibson never visited the cabin after Charlie died. A few years later, Elizabeth had a stroke, became disabled, and died at age 96 in 1999, ironically, coinciding with the end of the family cabin’s lease. 

After 1986, Jean Gibson and her nephew, Jeff Becker, his friend Paul Woit, along with Jim Olmsted Sr., and Olmsted’s three sons, Jim Jr., Jon, and Matt maintained the cabin until 1999. In November of 1998, in advance of the sunset of the lease, the Olmsteds moved the contents of the cabin to a storage unit for the family, officially ending the Gibson years. 

From 1986 to 1998, Jeff welcomed my dad and brothers at the cabin for deer hunting and other visits. When I began visiting, there were still deer and fish mounts throughout the cabin and Jeff recounted the hunting stories and family history. We loved the experience of stepping out of time and place to embrace the rustic way of life with no electricity or running water. We used the giant McCray icebox on the back porch and heated the house with the double barrel wood burner. We used the old oil lamps in the kitchen and cooked on the Montgomery Ward cookstove, and we kept a supply of cedar specifically for the stove because it burned fast and hot and could warm that kitchen up to 80 degrees, even in winter.

The National Park Service took possession of the Gibson cabin in January of 1999, and the cabin was in great condition until May of 1999, when NPS contractors rendered the building uninhabitable; perhaps to keep squatters out, accelerate its demise, or prepare it to be burned. NPS contractors smashed all the windows and the leaded glass French doors and slashed all the screens on the windows and porch. Lastly, they removed the old double barrel wood burner from the cabin’s family room and the little wood burner upstairs and left the vacant building to the elements. 

Recovery and restoration

The damage to the cabin in 1999 was hurtful and personally offensive to me, and that’s when I started collecting the history. My brothers and I became self-appointed stewards of the cabin. We swept up the broken glass, put a plexiglass window in the outhouse, and kept the screen porch clean. Jean Gibson also tried to preserve the cabin and regularly contacted NPS until she died in 2014; her life wish was for the cabin’s preservation. Jean and I had many conversations over the years to relay information and strategize how to protect the building. She was also her family’s historian, and in 2008 she wrote a brief memoir of the early years of the cabin and provided me with different versions with notes. 

In 2003, there was good news; an NPS historical evaluation report of the Gibson cabin determined the building to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. As a result of the 2003 eligibility report, the Park Service did several repairs in 2004 and 2005 to stabilize the building. In 2004, NPS installed a new roof, and in 2005 they fitted the old windows and French doors with framed cedar slat louvers with double screening. According to the 2010 NPS Gibson cabin condition report, “as families began to leave or retention of use expired, the National Park Service took over management responsibilities and the structures have since been stabilized… in 2005, windows were removed from the vacant structures and fixed louvers were installed to improve the ventilation and air circulation on these cabins.”

Unfortunately, that action plan did not account for moisture leaking into the building which continues to buckle the floors and cause the chinking between the logs to fall out. After the renovations in 2005, I put latches on the cabin doors and outhouse and began maintaining the grounds once a year. Despite stabilizing the building to slow the decay, the cabin was left abandoned with no further improvements for another 19 years.

I discovered the North Country National Scenic Hiking Trail Association (NCT) was flagging through the St. Croix River Valley and past the Gibson cabin in 2010. I recognized the trail would finally bring attention to the cabin, so I joined the NCT. In 2011, my oldest son and I helped build the North Country Trail between the Gordon Dam and West Mail Road. I have been the trail maintainer since 2012 when the Gibson cabin section of the NCT opened, allowing me to maintain the grounds and keep my eyes on the cabin. 

Latest chapter

More improvements came after a chance meeting in the fall of 2019. While doing my trail maintenance at the cabin, I ran into two NPS staff members; Jonathan Moore, and Lisa Yeager. Jonathan asked if I knew anything about the cabin to which I replied, “I’ve been waiting 20 years for someone to ask me that question.” Jonathan and I stayed in contact and discovered other interested groups like the Gordon-Wascott Historical Society and the NCT.

In 2021, we formed the Friends of the Gibson Cabin, and we met several nonprofit organizations at the cabin in May of 2021, where I presented some of the cabin and family history. It was determined that nothing could be done on the interior until the building was detoxed of mice and bats, but several updates could be made to the exterior. I suggested putting plexiglass in the windows to stop moisture from deteriorating the floors and chinking in the logs, but this has yet to be realized.

In June of 2023, Jonathan Moore and I met at the NPS office in Trego where we reviewed my collection of photos going back to the cabin’s construction to determine the type of original shingles on the roof. In 2024, on the fiftieth anniversary of NPS’s ownership of the historic cabin, a significant investment was made to stabilize the building. NPS invested almost $250,000 to install a new roof, apply a log preservative to the exterior, and make various other renovations.

The project was funded through President Biden’s bill to invest one billion dollars per year over five years in the NPS to reduce the backlog of deferred maintenance on historic structures in the national park system. Due to our family’s long connection to the cabin, the Olmsted family has offered to fund an informational kiosk at the Gibson cabin to provide information about the National Scenic Riverway and hiking trail and educate on the cabin’s history. 

The Gibson cabin’s history serves as a case study of the complex relationship between NPS and a structure in the riverway before it became a national park. Well-intentioned policies of the past often have unintended collateral damage, and the idea at the time was that by erasing the footprint on the land, NPS could create a perception of pristine uninhabited wilderness along the St. Croix River.

We should celebrate that this historical building has been rescued and is a testament to life on the St. Croix from a bygone era before it became a National Scenic Riverway. The cabin is also a reminder there were other people on the river whose history is gone. While we cannot change the past, we can promote healing through recognition by collecting and honoring the memories of the people who loved the river and felt a deep and magical sense of place along the St. Croix.