Island Park Idaho

We stumbled on a gem in Island Park Idaho. Johnny Sack’s cabin. Johnny was born in 1884. A German immigrant at the age of 6, making his way in the northwest United States by building log cabins and wooden furniture. When the US Forest Service in 1929 initiated a program where settlers could acquire homesteads on a 99-year lease, he staked out a prime location on Big Springs.

Despite being only 4’11” tall, Johnny had developed the skills to build his cabin himself, by hand. He also built all the furniture that he would use in the cabin while he lived there. One of Johnny’s trademarks in his construction was to use the bark that loggers threw away as decoration in both his interior of his cabin as well as his furniture.

Johnny originally thought that what he paid the US Forest Service for the lease of his homestead was highway robbery. The Forest Service charged him $4.15 per year for the lease of this pristine location. In total, that would be just over $400!

Johnny’s cabin was on Big Spring, which produces 120 million gallons of fresh water daily. The Springs feeds Henry Fork which feeds one of the best trout fishing waterways in America. Henry Fork eventually feeds into the Snake River where you find some of the best trout fly fishing in the country.

After spending his life building homes and furniture, Johnny Sacks dies in 1957. He willed the cabin to his two sisters. Neither of them wished to live in the cabin and it sat unoccupied. A local, Rudy Kipp, wished to make sure that the Cabin was preserved for history, offered to buy the cabin from the sisters, who eventually relented. Paying as much as he would for a sound home on owned land, Rudy Kipp was astounded to find that the contents of the cabin, all created by Johnny Sack, were all still in the cabin just as he had left it.

In the mid 1970’s, the US Government changed their minds. If a US citizen had entered into a 99-year lease, the US Government would have forced them to honor it. But the US Government decided that they should never have allowed settlers to build around Big Spring due to its significance in feeding the Henry Fork and eventually the Snake River. So, they informed all the lessees that despite them having lease documents giving them rights to the land until 2028, the US Government intended to take back the land in 1979.

Rudy Kipp applied for years to get the cabin placed on the National Register of Historic Places. But he learned that to get that status, a building had to be over 50 years old. The cabin would not be 50 years old until after the Government reclaimed it. 15 of the original 16 homestead cabins had been bulldozed by the Forest Service and Johnny Sack’s was next. Due to efforts of local activists, congress had passed a bill allowing the designation of Sack’s cabin to the National Register. When presented to President Carter, being an avid fly fisherman, he had fished Big Spring, the Henry Fork, and actually knew about Johnny Sack’s cabin. So, with no hesitation, he signed the bill. Just as th

e Forest Service bulldozers were ready to level the cabin, its status protected it.

We had great fun in this gem that we just discovered by chance.

Talk to you soon!