Property Description
The Suce Creek Cabin represents what a dream Montana cabin should be…a historic, rare find with beautiful finishes, a creek running through it, on 4.8 acres with trees and privacy. It is just a short distance to downtown Livingston, Forest Service access into the vast Absaroka wilderness, fishing and Yellowstone Park.
The core of the house, a hand-hewn log cabin, was originally built in 1884 in a small Scandinavian settlement named Skandia on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, roughly ten miles from the shore of Lake Superior. Constructed with enormous white pine logs, some measuring 20+ inches, was built by John Sandberg, a carpenter and violin maker, for his parents. In 2003, the cabin was disassembled with all logs tagged, numbered, and moved to Montana where it was re-stacked at Suce Creek. The restack was built in 2003-2004 by Eric Nellis of Nellis Custom Woodworks.
A lean-to addition incorporates a mudroom and 1/2 bath on one side and a cathedral-ceiling living room on the other. Three sets of French doors lead to a back porch that runs the length of the house; additional exterior porches were also added on the front and side. The living room and dining room each enjoy the double-sided dry-stacked stone fireplace. The Majestic wood/coal burning cook stove was a later addition to the kitchen.
Window openings were enlarged from single double-hung frames to pairs, allowing more light to enter and making the interior spaces brighter. All of the interior log work remains exposed to reveal richly textured surfaces. Other interior walls are plastered with a soft-white shade offsetting the aged wood and stone. Much of the flooring came from the original sub-roof, some planks as wide as 18″.
Dormers were added to create a more usable space on the second floor which is comprised of two bedrooms and a full bathroom. Old wood is used throughout for ceilings, floors, doors, and trim. The bathroom is a collage of recycled materials including old tin, wainscoting, painted barn wood, galvanized steel, and a refinished antique 5 1/2 foot claw foot tub.
The cabin has in-floor radiant heat in both stories with all new plumbing and electrical systems installed during the re-stack.
The seller’s goal with this project was to simply preserve the feeling of an old structure yet have all of the modern conveniences. One with a sense of place where the cabin fits into the landscape, as if it had there for a hundred years.
