The vanishing cabin

They are sprouting up all along the water lines.

Like the vigorous kudzu vine in the South, which engulfs everything in its path, multi-million dollar “cabins” are creeping across the shorelines of the Inland Northwest.

As the huge waterfront estates go in, property prices go up, sometimes driving out families who’ve owned lake places for generations.

“The hardest thing for me,” says Sandra Yohannan Dodge, who has a cabin on Priest Lake, “is seeing all the darling little cabins right on the water disappear as the old-timers, the original fishermen and loggers, passed away. As those cabins get sold, they have been torn down, and big homes have gone up.”

The profile of the shoreline certainly has changed.

“I think these mega-homes that are going up on postage-stamp sized lots are the most wasteful, poorly planned, arrogance-inspired buildings ever,” says a retired small-cabin owner who wishes to remain anonymous.

“If everyone built more humane-sized dwellings,” she adds, “we all would be better off. What has happened to common sense?”

Simple, humane-size dwellings were the premise of the post-World War II era inland northwest cabin culture. Spending a week at the lake often times meant getting away from it all, including many of the modern amenities cabingoers enjoyed at their year-round homes in the city.

In the early 1960s, Francis “Yoh” and Rosemary Yohannan purchased their lot on Priest Lake for $4,000. By 1965 their dream cabin was finished.

“It was built when Sunset magazine came out with the A-frame style,” says Sandra Dodge.

The cabin still has all the original shake siding, aqua sink and furnishings.

“My youngest son has made me promise I will never change anything,” she says. “But I finally broke down and put up a new shower curtain.”

Changing lake culture

Three generations of the Yohannan/Dodge family have taken part in the summer lake culture at Priest.

“But, there seems to be two different lake cultures today,” says Bill Dodge, who has been going to Priest Lake since he started dating his future wife 34 years ago.

“There is the old culture and what I affectionately refer to as the ‘nouveau riche’ or out-of-area money,” he says. “There is just a different feel, a different connection to the land.”

While the ‘mine-is-bigger-than-yours’ style of architecture seems to have replaced ‘being-at-one-with-nature,’ the Dodges are among a number of longtime cabin owners who love the land, walk gently on it and don’t plan to sell to the highest bidder—at least not yet.

The Shadduck family of Coeur d’Alene has been spending summers on Hayden Lake for 40 years.

After driving a tank across Europe during World War II, Marvin Shadduck returned to the Spokane Valley as a school principal. He and his wife, Ragna, soon purchased a lot at Hayden Haven, a community on the north shore of Hayden Lake and built their first little cabin in 1947.

Every year since, generations of Shadducks have spent summers at the rustic cabin, visiting neighbors, swimming in the lake and hiking the trails.

“For years the big entertainment on Saturday nights,” says Bruce Shadduck, 63, “was sitting outside listening to the singing from the church camp across the lake.”

Daughter Kiantha Shadduck, 33, says different sounds dominate the lake today.

“There is this huge push for jet skis and big, loud boats,” she says. “It is such a different feel.”

But the Shadducks keep going back to their small cabin because of the memories and the family’s special connection with nature.

Charles and Mary Jane Booth of Cheney also return to their modest lake place each summer.

About 30 years ago the Booths were summer camping with their first two children in a tent trailer at a spot overlooking Glengary Bay on Lake Pend Oreille.

“After three years of doing that,” says Charles Booth, 77, “my wife was getting really tired of it. Oftentimes it was very cold, even in the middle of summer.”

The Booths noticed an old one-room fishing cabin that had been sitting idle for more than a year. Mary Jane Booth decided to approach the owner, Herrick “Swede” Heitman, about its availability.

“We rented it that day on a handshake,” says Booth, “and have been there ever since.”

Over the years the Booth family has improved the cabin and taken care of the maintenance and grounds.

Along the way the Booths’ five children, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren have learned to fish, sail and cherish the outdoors.

It’s not unusual for the smaller, more traditional cabins to have been in one family’s ownership for dozens of years.

Four generations of Wellers have made the summer trek to their 80-year old family cabin on Newman Lake.

The land has been in the family for more than 100 years, says Mary Weller Souza of Coeur d’Alene.

“When all of our kids were small and our parents were still alive, we would have a yearly summer weekend event that we called ‘Weller Daze,’ ” says Souza. “We would bring tents and camp out in the yard, take turns with each family cooking a meal for the whole group, and we would have ‘team’ games like swimming, canoe paddling, egg toss and pie-eating contests.”

Keeping it in the family

It’s becoming more of a challenge to keep the family-owned lake places just that: family owned. Often siblings or cousins have to get together to keep the place, when parents pass away or can’t handle the upkeep of the property anymore.

Today seven families share the Weller cabin and expenses.

“We have had some bumps in the road getting the management organization in place,” says Souza, “but now it is running very smoothly.”

The Weller family formed a limited liability company a few years ago “to ensure an organized, legal way to pass it on to the next generation,” says Souza.

With property taxes going up, some people are being forced to sell because even though they own the land and cabin, taxes are frequently too high for owners who now live on fixed incomes and have no one else in the family to turn to for financial support.

“Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” says Mead High School grad Terry Robinson, 51, “Priest Lake was known as the ‘poor man’s lake.’ Today it has become a true ‘rich man’s lake.’ ”

The Robinson family bought two lots in the late ‘60s and built a small cabin on one.

“So we have options going forward,” says Robinson. “If the prices continue to rise, we can sell one lot to help pay for taxes and maintenance on the other.”

The Dodge family is determined to keep its Priest Lake cabin.

“I’ve told my husband that we would sell our house in town before I would get rid of the cabin,” says Yohannan Dodge. “I’ve also told my sons to get good jobs.”