Access to this historic cabin is only obtainable by the Parsons family (contact info unknown) although I've been told the owners don't mind if people stop in to visit briefly during summer months when the cabin is in active use. The cabin is off limits all other months of the year and closed for the winter. Visitors may still take pictures of the cabin from outside the entry gate anytime.
The National Register of Historic Places describes the significance of this private cabin:
The Reginald Parsons Dead Indian Lodge and its six accessory buildings and single structure, built primarily in 1937, gualify for National Register listing under criteria Af B, and C. The nominated 4.12-acre parcel of forest and meadow land on the Dead Indian Plateau in the southern Cascades is associated with outdoor recreational development (hunting and fishing) in southern Oregon's upper Klamath drainage basin. This building ensemble is one of the few remaining unaltered examples of a privately owned rustic summer home in Jackson County's upper Klamath Basin and is the only such complex listed in the Jackson County Cultural and Historical Resource Survey. Moreover, the lodge and its outbuildings were constructed for Reginald Parsons, a noted Seattle financier and philanthropist, southern Oregon orchardist (Hillcrest Orchard in Medford}), and northern California rancher (Mountcrest Ranch in Hilt) from 1908 through the 1940s. The Dead Indian Lodge ensemble represents the only privately owned complex built-for and used by Reginald Parsons as a summer retreat in the pacific Northwest. Finally, the Dead Indian Lodge and related cultural features are notable intact examples of the Modern Rustic style of architecture in southern Oregon's Klamath basin associated with the body of work designed by Robert J, Keeney, then a new associate working with prolific southern Oregon and northern California architect Frank C. Clark. Keeney and Clark are known to have designed only one other rustic log building, the similar but smaller and somewhat altered log house constructed nearby in 1937 for Reginald Parsons 's Hillcrest Orchard resident managers, Maisie and Timothy Daily. Parsons's lodge is included in Oregon's "Inventory of Historic Properties for its association with prominent owner Reginald Parsons and noted architect Frank Clark.
Recreational Development of the Dead Indian Country
Recreational Development of the Dead Indian Country The Reginald Parsons Dead Indian Lodge ensemble possesses historical significance for its association with the recreational development of Oregon's southern Cascade Range and, specifically, the Dead Indian Plateau in Jackson County. The lodge complex is one of the few extant seasonal retreats in this area built exclusively for private use before World War II. Its present high degree of physical integrity visually conveys its contribution to the outdoor recreational history of the Dead Indian country.
The recreational use of the Dead Indian country, encompassing an area in the upper Klamath Basin east of Ashland, Oregon, roughly contained by Fish Lake on tfce north, Lake of the Woods on the northeast, and the Greensprings Highway (Hwy 66) on the south, dates back to the mid-1800s. As early as 1864, two Ashland residents organized an elk hunting expedition to the Dead Indian country. In the late 1860s, not long after Ashland area residents developed a primitive wagon trail to the head of Dead Indian Creek, small parties from the Rogue River Valley (Jacksonville area) made excursions into the country "'to try their adventures amid the beautiful . . . almost classic glades and marshes of Dead Indian, 111 By 1870, after this wagon road had been improved and extended over the mountains to Pelican Bay on Upper Klamath Lake, a local Jacksonville newspaper reported that the Dead Indian country was becoming "'the favorite summer resort for the people of the valley, who not only enjoy the pure and bracing mountain air but are also Relighted by the presence of the most romantic and remarkable scenery," In the 1870s and 1880s, Dead Indian Soda Springs became a popular destination for several area residents, who spent a few days or weeks there each summer. Judge John Breckenridge Waldo, recently retired chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, led a hunting and sightseeing party down the spine of the Cascades (roughly following the present Pacific Crest Trail) into the Dead Indian country in the summer of 1888. Two years later, Judge Orange Jacobs/ writing for the Pacific Magazine, promoted the Dead Indian country as the "paradise of sportsmen, 11 where elk, bear, and black-tailed deer were "everywhere—in prairies, glade and wood," where pheasants, mountain quail and blue grouse were abundant, and where trout flourished in streams and lakes. "What more could the sportsman desire," Jacobs queried.
Development of the Dead Indian country for recreational use accelerated after the turn of the century as improved roads into the area and the increasing use of automobiles afforded better access from the Rogue River Valley. The Dead Indian Road (recently renamed "Dead Indian Memorial Road), which then provided the most feasible route from, the valley to Crater Lake and Upper Klamath Lake, stimulated recreational use of the area. In 1909 S. L. Burton reported: Of late years this region has taken on considerable prominence as play ground for the people of this portion of [the] Rogue River valley, The magnificent scenery, teeming trout streams, its cold and pure springs, and the abundance of game makes it an ideal place for a summer outing, while not least among the attractions are the immense huckleberry patches, which appeal alike to the summer camper and the black and brown bears.
Fiye years later, F. D. Wagner noted other attractions in the area: scenic glimpses of "Mt. Pitt or McLoughlin, in all its capped glory/
and "virgin forests of stately pines and firs through much of which the sun never penetrates." 7 Remembering her childhood in the Dead Indian country in the mid-1910s, Agnes Jones recalled that several Ashland businessmen would bring their families to camp on the south side of Dead Indian Memorial Road, about four miles east of the Lindsay homestead, in an area that Reginald Parsons began exploring on recreational outings in the early 1910s, 8 After a failed attempt to purchase land for his own private retreat in 1919, he succeeded in acquiring about an acre of land south of Dead Indian Memorial Road (now on the west shore of Howard Prairie Lake) in the mid-1920s, where he had a small log hunting cabin built.
The 1920s and 1930s witnessed an even greater increase in recreational use of the Dead Indian country as outdoor pursuits became affordable to more and more Americans and as the Forest Service encouraged outdoor recreation on its nearby public land, especially during the Great Depression when some of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal relief programs fostered the development of recreational facilities on public lands. The popular Dead Indian Soda Springs, which attracted ail increasing number of campers after road access improved, was developed as a public resort in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1933 an Emergency Relief Administration work crew built trails, a picnic area, and rustic outdoor community kitchen at the resort. Around the same time, the Civilian Conservation Corps developed campgrounds at nearby Gypsy Springs, a popular berry picking camp. Summer resorts at popular angling retreats on Fish Lake and Lake of the Woods, developed in the 1930s on inholdings in the Rogue River National Forest and accessed by Dead Indian Memorial Road, attracted even more outdoor enthusiasts to the plateau country. In 1937 Reginald Parsons, after visiting the Dead Indian country for nearly thirty years on recreational outings,, was able to acquire 200 acres of forest and meadow land on which to build a private "hunting lodge." Sixty years after its construction, Parsons Dead Indian Lodge complex is one of the very few remaining well-developed and unaltered examples of a private family retreat in the Dead Indian area.