4/11/2025 |
Photo courtesy of the Little Snake River Valley Museum’s Facebook page
The historic cabin of mountain man Jim Baker on display at the Little Snake River Museum is scheduled for some much-needed restoration work.
Jim Baker was born December 19th, 1818, in Belleville, Illinois. In the early 1840s, Baker made his way to the Green River and the camp of the renowned American mountaineer, Jim Bridger. After a series of adventures, Baker, a true mountain man in his own right, chose to settle in the Little Snake River Valley during the 1870s.
Baker’s cabin served as his home and a general store until his death in 1898. The cabin sat on its original location, a field outside of Dixon, Wyoming, for nearly twenty years after Baker’s death before being moved, log by log, to Frontier Park in Cheyenne. In the 1970s, the structure, now entirely dissembled, was returned to the Little Snake River Valley, where museum staff, with the help of local carpenter and artist Frankie Duncan, undertook the painstaking process of rebuilding the cabin.
Reconstruction was finished in 1976, and the Jim Baker cabin has been on display at the Little Snake River Museum ever since. However, the harsh Wyoming weather has not been kind to the 152-year-old building.
Little Snake River Museum Director Lela Emmons told Bigfoot99 that she has asked the Colorado-based restoration company HistoriCorps to preserve the historic integrity of Jim Baker’s cabin.
Emmons said the structure is made from hand-cut rectangular cottonwood logs. Cottonwood is susceptible to rot and insect attacks, making it unsuitable for long-term use in areas with variable weather conditions, such as in the Little Snake River Valley.
After 152 years, the Jim Baker cabin isn’t exactly rotting away. Emmons told Bigfoot99 that HistoriCorps volunteers will replace only the logs in very poor condition with reproductions made to mimic Baker’s hand-hewn craftsmanship.
Bigfoot99 reached out to HistoriCorps Program Manager Michael Guillot for details on the restoration project.
In a written statement, Guillot said he is still in the process of finalizing some key project details and asked to postpone an interview until those details are confirmed.
HistoriCorps is scheduled to begin restoration work on the Jim Baker cabin this July.
