A 79-year-old cabin met an unfortunate demise when members of the Dartmouth Outing Club gathered early last Monday morning on Happy Hill, where the cabin stood, to tear it down.
Since the cost of repairing the crumbling cabin would have far exceeded the cost to build a new one, the DOC decided to dismantle the existing structure and replace it with a new stone shelter.
David Hooke, facilities manager for the DOC, said he noticed the deteriorating condition of the cabin several years ago. And Sarah McCoy '99, a DOC member who helped with the deconstruction of the cabin, said it was rat-infested and that the roof of the cabin was "completely rotted out."
Hooke said because the new shelter will be constructed of stone, it should prove more durable than a log shelter and less prone to vandalism.
The new shelter, designed by Peter Semen '97, will be able to accommodate about six to eight hikers.
The structure will be made primarily of stone, with the exception of the roof and the floor, which will be made of wood, said DOC member Greg Miller '99, who will be leading the construction.
Miller said they plan to have the new shelter completed by this summer.
The old historic cabin was built by the DOC in 1918 for its members to use while vacationing in New England -- "a spectacular location to stay while skiing in the area," Hooke said.
About 20 years after the cabin was built, a part of the Appalachian Trail -- a hiking route which begins in Georgia and ends in Maine -- was marked near the cabin's location.
The cabin's close proximity to the trail led hikers to use the cabin for shelter, Hooke said.
The cabin was the oldest shelter on the stretch of the trail -- which runs from Woodstock, Vt. to Mt. Moosilauke, N.H., just beyond Kinsman Notch -- that the DOC maintains.
Hooke said much of the damage to the cabin occurred during the hikers' stays because the cabin was not originally built to serve as a trail shelter.
"The cabin started to deteriorate," Hooke said. "Floorboards and shelves were ripped out and windows were broken."
Easy public accessibility also began to contribute to the damage as towns began to develop around the once sparsely-populated Happy Hill area.
"It was only about four miles from the center of Norwich," Hooke said. "Anyone could just walk right into the cabin."
During the 1960s, random people from surrounding cities "crashed" in the cabins and "overdosed on drugs," Hooke said.
During the winter term, DOC members hauled stones for the new shelter on sleds over the snow to the construction site.
The stones came from the ruins of an old stone wall that used to stand when the area was mostly farmlands, McCoy said.
"We first had to have archaeologists come and look at the stone walls to make sure that we weren't taking apart anything historical," Miller said.
