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View Full List of National Register: Wyoming Listings

View Full List of National Register: Wyoming Listings

Chambers Lodge

 
 

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The Chambers Lodge, also known as the Redick Lodge, is situated on the northwest bank of upper Fremont Lake in Sublette County, Wyoming. The building is finely hand-crafted using native materials, granite stone and Douglas fir. It sits upon stone rubble foundations, and its walls are exclusively horizontal logs-in-panels. The outbuildings clustered around the Lodge include a machine shop-storage shed, root cellar, pump house along the lake shore, three small guest cabins, barn and two privies. All are constructed in the same vernacular as the Lodge building with native materials.

The idea for the Lodge was first conceived in 1916 by Nebraskan George M. Redick while on a scouting trip with officials of the Union Pacific Railroad. The railroad had considered building a hotel in Pinedale or on nearby Fremont Lake to serve as an overnight stop along the route from the railhead at Rock Springs to Yellowstone National Park. Although construction of the hotel was soon rejected as being prohibitively expensive, Redick himself was transfixed by the setting of the lake and returned the following summer with his family to locate a summer cabin site. That same summer they purchased horses and equipment, commissioned architect Otis Miller of Miles City, Montana to design the Lodge, and contracted with Forest Ranger E.E. McKee for a lease for the site and to mark the trees for the cabin logs in the canyon at the head of the lake. Construction of the Redick Lodge began in the summer of 1918. The Redick family occupied the Lodge throughout the 1920s, spending summers there and often entertaining visitors. However, the Redick family fortunes plummeted during the Great Depression, and their last summer at the Lodge was spent in 1931. In October 1938 the Lodge was purchased by Dr. Oliver Chambers of Rock Springs and has remained in the family.

The historical significance of the Lodge is based upon its association with the early-day recreation industry in Wyoming, a form of commerce which has burgeoned into an economic mainstay for the region. Built at a time when dude ranches were beginning to flourish and the automobile was opening many areas to working class tourist trade, the Lodge typifies a distinct form of recreational retreat - the private seasonal residence placed in a spectacular Rocky Mountain setting. It is also significant for its representation as a locally prominent example of an architectural style known as Western Craftsman, a style most commonly associated with the dude ranches which had sprung up throughout the Rocky Mountain west during the early decades of the twentieth century.

Redick-Lodge
 

 

Date Added to Register:
Friday, March 18, 1983
 
Location:
Sublette County
 
County:
Sublette County
 
Smithsonian Number: 
48SU413  

 

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