Saveitforparts

Hiding in the woods near Second Creek is this tiny log cabin, locally known as “Shorty’s Cabin”

Obviously “Shorty” was a smaller fellow, the cabin is barely 6′ high. It had a single window (now boarded up), a door, a stove, and the remains of a bed. Between the stove and the bed, nearly the entire floor space would have been taken up.

The cabin had a layer of tarpaper over the wooden roof, which helped waterproof it, but tarpaper is easily torn by falling branches or hail, so it would not have been a very permanent solution.  The roof is already half gone.

Window, bedframe (on floor), and tarpaper:

Some more views of the cabin:

Close-up showing the axe and saw work on the logs:

Closer close-up showing worm trails in the logs where the bark has fallen off:

As the story goes, Shorty was a cook at Hawk Inlet (either the mine or cannery there), got tired of his job, and quit to become a fisherman. He moved to Funter Bay and built the cabin, then began constructing a boat. He was well along in the boat building, when a visitor stopped by and remarked that the boat had no shaft alley (the trough or groove where the tail shaft would run from the engine to the propeller). Shorty gave up in disgust at his shoddy design, jumped on the next mail boat to Juneau, and was never heard from again.

What appears to be part of a boat hull, perhaps Shorty’s failed project:

Other artifacts and debris scattered around include some metal drums, one may have been a barrel stove:

Shorty’s kettle:

Shorty’s boots:  

Here’s Dad in front of Shorty’s cabin in the ’70s, when the roof was in better condition!

I am not sure who “Shorty” really was, there were a number of people with that nickname in the area in the early-mid 20th century, including a dairy farmer, a butcher, and a suspected bank robber. So far I’ve been unable to find anything more on the “Shorty” of Funter Bay.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 14th, 2013 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Boatbuilding, Funter Bay History, Funter Bay People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.