The Littlebrook cabin will be on the annual Mt. Hood Steiner Cabin Tour on Aug. 12, 2023.
With little money and no electricity, the Steiner family used hand tools and pulleys to craft cabins made of trees and stone found in the forest. They bought sinks and windows.
Fireplaces are surrounded by basalt rock.
Margareta (Mollie) Ann Schwein Steiner and Henry Steiner lived and worked in the Mount Hood area.
The Steiners made kitchen tables and benches from logs.
Fan of cozy cabins, self-taught carpenters and Mount Hood can purchase tickets to the Annual Mount Hood Steiner Cabins Tour.
Nancy Dougherty's Steiner cabin, in Rhododendron, was on the 2014 Steiner Cabins Tour sponsored by the Mt. Hood Cultural Center and Museum.
Steiner log cabins were oriented toward the most scenic spot on the land.
All the log structures were built in the Oregon Rustic style by self-taught designer, engineer and builder Henry Steiner with help from his wife Mollie and their 11 children.
Owners give their cabin names. This historic one is called "Still Th'Air."
This is the kitchen in Nancy Dougherty's Steiner cabin. Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian
This is the front door of a Steiner log cabin on Mount Hood.
Busy Florida veterinarian, hiker and writer George Jutras spontaneously bought a 1935 Steiner cabin in Rhododendron during a hiking trip.
The Steiners were proud of their functional and economically assembled homes. But they also used their hand tools to painstakingly sculpt details from the materials’ natural beauty, character and curves.
Gnarled tree roots were transformed into tubular doorknobs, curtain rods and clothes pegs.
This is the original tub from a 1932 Steiner cabin. The frugal Steiners had to buy tubs, sinks and windows.
The children peeled bark off the large Douglas fir logs for cabin walls and collected small, twisted trees to use for rocking chair bases and table legs.
Thin rods of wood form a wagon wheel or are arranged like sunbursts that reach gable peaks under which is an arch-shaped door.
The wagon wheel spokes seen in this kitchen table made by the Steiners is a theme repeated in other parts of the house.
A former nursery was converted to a bathroom off the bedroom in Nancy Dougherty's Steiner cabin.
A tiny toile fabric tote hangs from a branch peg in one of the bedrooms. Pegs were installed to keep doors closed and secure in the room. Roots were also used on on the side of windows to hold back draperies.
This bedroom has the original light fixture.
A commemorative Steiner Log Cabin blanket is on the couch in the the den of Nancy Dougherty's Steiner cabin.
Here’s your chance to see inside cozy, century-old cabins on Mount Hood crafted with distinctive Oregon Rustic character by the resourceful Steiner family who hand built durable, artistic structures using foraged trees and river rock.
The 19th Annual Mount Hood Steiner Cabins Tour on Saturday, Aug. 10, opens the doors to three log homes built in the 1920s and 1930s in Rhododendron as well as the nearby Steiner-built 1937 former church, now an event center, that was moved twice to preserve it.
“If you always wanted to attend the Steiner Cabins Tour, this is your lucky day,” say organizers, who introduced steiner.tixsimple.com as an easy way to purchase a $50 ticket after internet searches misdirected people to last year’s tour page.
About 85 tickets were still for sale Friday with start times at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and noon.
The event is a fundraiser for the nonprofit Mt. Hood Cultural Center and Museum.
The self-guided, self-paced tour spotlights Henry and Molly Steiner and their children who constructed about 100 pitched-roof cabins in picturesque forests and along streams between Government Camp and Brightwood.
Without electricity, the Steiners used cranks and pulley systems to hoist heavy logs into place. They collected naturally bending trees to use for arched doors and rocking chair bases. Tubular tree roots held curtain rods. Sinks, windows and hinges were the few store-bought items.
Steiner cabins, which represent the Arts and Crafts movement joining hands with the Depression’s Make Do spirit, have endured, despite harsh weather, fires and owner neglect.
Stops on the tour include a 1925 cabin that was in rough shape when owners Mike and Susie Wickward bought it from a bank in foreclosure more than a decade ago. It had been stripped of most of its charming, handmade features, and then abandoned.
The couple has carefully restored the original architecture and details “bred from a time when craftsmanship and creativity using natural resources were valued,” Susie Wickward told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Builder Mark Fritch replaced damaged logs and a large covered porch faces Hackett Creek. Tour goers will see photographs of past misguided remodel projects that have been corrected.
“Barely an hour from Portland, our Steiner cabin is a throwback to a quieter time in the Northwest,” said Wickward.
Another stop is a cabin called “Dancing Bear” that exhibits Steiner trademarks such as decorative porch posts and curved stair railings. A Steiner-made split-log dining table that was lost for more than 20 years was recently returned to the cabin.
A 1938 cabin also open during the tour was restored by the owners over the last decade and sits on land leased long term from the U.S. Forest Service. There are about 600 recreation residences in the Zigzag Ranger District that are part of a program that started in the 1920s, said Lloyd Musser, curator of the Mt. Hood Cultural Center and Museum.
The 1937 St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, built by the Steiners and moved twice, will be on the 2023 Mt. Hood Steiner Cabin Tour in Rhododendron.
The large structure is heated by a wood stove. A furnace would have required punching holes in the log walls.
St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Mount Hood, completed in 1937 and moved twice, was rescued and restored by Mike Gudge.
Supporters of the Mt. Hood Cultural Center & Museum gathered August 2022 for dinner at the Steiner-built church, which is now a gathering space.
The former church’s sacristy became a kitchen.
The former church’s transept became a bathroom.
The former choir loft overlooks the main space of the 1937 St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church.
Gudge bought trees from a mill property near Sandy to build a bridge and second set of stairs. The pine for the railings came from Eastern Oregon.
The 1937 St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church is now a community gathering space, available for events.
To repair the old church, Gudge told the Mount Hood “Beneath Wy’East” newsletter he and John Steiner, “literally lifted the walls and measured, scribed, notched and fit the new logs back into place at the bottom of the wall.”
The 1937 St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, built by the Steiners and moved twice, will also be one of seven stops on the 2023 Mt. Hood Steiner Cabin Tour in Rhododendron.
There was no plumbing or bathroom when Mike Gudge bought the former church. Now the former transept is a bathroom.
Roots, branches and leftover wood were used as latches and pegs.
Tickets ($50) to the annual Mt. Hood Steiner Cabin Tour in Rhododendron on Aug. 12 go on sale at 8 a.m. on July 1 at mthoodmuseum.org.
Historians believe Henry Steiner, with the help of the eldest of his 11 kids including son John, only built two churches.
The entry is a double-leaf door fashioned of half-rounds of peeled logs standing on end and nailed to a backing of boards.
The former church’s sacristy became a kitchen.
The St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, completed in 1937 and moved twice, was rescued by Gudge.
The Steiner-built church has been converted into a gathering space by owner Mike Gudge and will be one of seven stops on the annual Mt. Hood Steiner Cabin Tour in Rhododendron on Aug. 12, 2023.
Historians believe Henry Steiner, with the help of the eldest of his children, including son John, built only two churches. One burned down, the other, St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, completed in 1937 and moved twice, was rescued and restored over the last 40 years by owner Mike Gudge.
The Steiner Church, now an event center, “is an architectural and craftsmanship masterpiece,” said Musser.
Cabin owners and Mt. Hood Cultural Center and Museum volunteers will answer questions about the history of the Steiner cabins. The museum at 88900 Government Camp Loop in Government Camp is open year round. Visit mthoodmuseum.org to learn more about the Steiner Society and museum events.
The Annual Mount Hood Steiner Cabins Tour start times are 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and noon at the Alpine Events Center, 73365 E. Highway 26, Rhododendron (503-622-4618). The tour ends at 3 p.m.
— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072
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