The Wrangell Ranger District's top priority for a new U.S. Forest Service public-use cabin is Little Lakes, on a former logging road about 25 miles from downtown Wrangell and near the Long Lake Trailhead.
After a yearlong public process, the U.S. Forest Service has announced eight potential cabin sites in the Petersburg and Wrangell Ranger Districts.
After considering the environmental impacts and accessibility of hundreds of sites suggested by members of the public or identified by staff, the district picked the ones that are most likely to see substantial traffic and compete for federal funding, and announced them in a draft decision published Thursday, Oct. 19.
There are three sites in the Petersburg Ranger District - Blind Slough, Keex' Kwáan and Woodpecker Cove Road - and five sites in the Wrangell Ranger District - Burnett Portage, Fools Inlet, Fools Pass, Little Lakes and Mustang Lake.
The Little Lakes cabin site, which is about 25 miles from town on a Forest Service road near the existing Long Lake Trailhead, is the Wrangell District's top priority.
The location is accessible by car in the summer, is hidden from the road by a small hill, and provides ample recreation opportunities including boating, hiking, hunting and wildlife viewing.
"We're excited because we've been working with the school and the tech club and they did a bunch of drone work there and gave us some really good mapping and photographs of the area to help us with our design there," said recreation staff officer Tory Houser.
She hopes that the project will be constructed in the next few years.
Accessibility was one of the Forest Service's top priorities when picking cabin locations.
In the past three years, cabins on the road system or near protected waters experienced the most traffic - Middle Ridge, the Wrangell District's one roadside cabin, has the highest annual average occupancy, with 141 rental days per year. The Wrangell and Petersburg districts "aim to address the change in public cabin use patterns by identifying and constructing new public use cabin in locations closer to communities that are easily accessible by road or saltwater," according to the draft decision.
People "don't need a special piece of equipment like a jet boat or an airplane" to get to the proposed cabin locations, said Houser.
Just because the Forest Service has identified five potential cabin locations in the Wrangell district doesn't mean that all five of those cabins will be built. The aim is to locate possible cabin sites, then compete for funding as it becomes available.
The Forest Service doesn't anticipate any significant impacts to wetlands, animals or rare plants from building at any of the eight Wrangell and Petersburg locations, but it doesn't commit to actually building at any of them.
Bringing new cabins to the Wrangell Ranger District might also be a tough sell because "(the district) has a lot of cabins and sadly, a lot of our cabins are not being used at high levels," said Houser. "If we're going to invest the huge amount of money that it's going to take to construct a cabin, we have to make sure that it gets a lot of use and is enjoyed by the public."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture budgeted $14.4 million for cabin projects in the Tongass and Chugach national forests using funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021. The money will be spread throughout the 10 districts of the Tongass and the three ranger districts of the Chugach.
"Every district wants to build cabins," Houser added, not just Wrangell and Petersburg. "We just have a lot to compete against, especially when you consider population areas."
If the draft locations are approved, she hopes to move forward with construction at the Little Lakes site in the next few years. The district would work with the Wrangell Cooperative Association to give the cabin a Tlingit name.
The district is currently preparing bid documents for the project and won't know how much a cabin will cost until contractors weigh in. Recently constructed cabins, such as the Raven's Roost cabin on Mitkof Island, cost around $500,000 to $1,000,000 to build.
"It's expensive," said Houser. "Government contracting is expensive."
The potential cabin locations can't be approved, however, until the public comment period closes on Dec. 4, according to National Environmental Policy Act regulations. Only community members who have previously weighed in on locations can comment. If the Forest Service receives no objections to the eight locations in the draft decision, it can finalize the decision five days later.
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