Swedish immigrant August Swanson built this one-room cabin on the family homestead in 1921. Unlike his hand-hewn log house, he built the cabin with milled lumber. He sided it with horizontal boards and battens, perhaps to mimic the pattern of log walls. The simple gabled porch entry roof, added later, gave the cabin its charming appearance. August constructed the cabin during a period of transition, after he had abandoned mining and began supplementing his farm income by hauling timber and working on the Northern Pacific railroad. Simple pleasures, like a game of cards with family or a homemade beer, offered August respite from his long workdays. While working on the railroad, he injured his eye, resulting in partial blindness. By 1940, August retired from the railroad and moved into the cabin, making room in the farmhouse for daughter Edna’s family. His wife Sadie spent extended periods away from the farm, staying with their other daughters while receiving medical care. August’s health also declined through the 1940s. When August and Sadie died in 1948, friends memorialized them as “the last of the Quartz district’s pioneers.”
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