White Grass Cabin Interior Work

We are bringing the interiors of the cabins at White Grass Ranch into the 21st century. This is the bathroom for Cabin 1158, where we are installing new sheetrock and fixtures including on-demand water heaters. Ben Isaacson is installing a new door in the picture above. This cabin will be finished in April 2012 and will add two more bedrooms for volunteers or trainees of WCHP.

Winter at White Grass Ranch 2012

Winter at White Grass means dealing with Mother Nature. Jeff Olson is seen here removing a couple feet of snow from cabin 1160 (Triple Cabin). This newly rehabilitated cabin has a new metal roof that could be damaged if we don't remove some of the snow load.


-Ben Isaacson

Look for us at Saving Places!

Headed to the Colorado Preservation Inc. Saving Places conference in Denver next week? Keep an eye out for WCHP Director Craig Struble who will be presenting on Thursday, and for our poster! It should be a great conference, complete with a "Linseed Oil Paint for the Preservation of Historic Wood" presentation. We've been using linseed oil paint for a few years now, and are happy to see that others think it's a great as we do!

For more information on the conference, check out Colorado Preservation, Inc.'s website.

See you there!

We knew it all along...

This week, Preservation Green Lab released a study showing that the greenest building is the one that's already built. We all knew it intuitively, but having the cold hard facts strengthens our arguments for rehabilitation over demolition. For a great summary of and a link to the report, visit the National Trust for Historic Preservation's website.

Volunteers at the White Grass Dude Ranch Rehabilitation Project

Thank You Becket-Chimney Corners!

For the past few days, members of the Becket-Chimney Corners YMCA Summer Service Program have been hard at work out at White Grass Dude Ranch. The teenaged team hails from Becket, Massachusetts and has been putting their skills to use through their assistance with the chinking of Cabin 1160 in addition to the installation of an ADA ramp at Cabin 1155. We here at the WCHP just wanted to say THANK YOU for all your help and good luck with the rest of travels and work this summer!

And It's Summer Again (Finally!) in the Valley...

It unfortunately has been a few months, and a very long winter since we last posted an update. With the last of the snow finally starting to melt off the mountain peaks, we decided that the time had probably come to let everyone know what we’ve been up to during the past few wintry months. Well accustomed to the long, cold winters you'll not be surprised to hear that we’ve been hard at work through it all- it would have been a shame to let all those feet of snow slow us down.

So what have we been up to you might ask? An excellent question! Well, to be honest, we may have cheated the weather for a little bit and headed over to Joshua Tree National Park in Twentynine Palms, California. But there was a better reason than merely dodging the snow- we had an assignment there helping out with the restoration of the McHaney Cabin. But fear not, we did get our fair share of snow time while we were doing window, roof, and stucco repair on the Dewey Gifford House at Captiol Reef National Park over in Torrey, Utah.

Not spending all of our time away from home, we continued and are still presently continuing our restoration work both at the Brinkerhoff Lodge and at our White Grass Dude Ranch (both located in Grand Teton National Park, our current place of residence) where we now have three buildings finished and currently occupied by two interns and our caretaker- a position new this season!

So that’s pretty much the jist what we’ve been up to while the rest of you were snowed in at home. We have a lot of great projects planned for the summer, some of which are already well underway. Hopefully more posts to follow about the aforementioned projects as the summer rolls on. We'd love for you to check in from time to time when you have a minute or two- it’s going to be a great summer!

Thank you Jackson Hole Community School Volunteers!!

Thank you so much to the fantastic group of high schoolers who came out from the Jackson Hole Community School this past week!  Four students - Esther, Henry, Miles, and Dan - and their professor, Christian, came out to the Lucas Fabian homestead to help us secure the window shutters in preparation for winter.  The Lucas Fabian site was homesteaded in 1913 and was the home of the pioneering single woman Geraldine Lucas.  The homestead is also significant to the development of Grand Teton National Park as it served as the summer residence for Harold Fabian, a key player in the 1950 expansion of the park lands. 

It was a great time and we are so appreciative!  Good luck with the rest of the school year and we would love to have you out again!

Thanks guys!  You were the best!