The Sunset Cabins are located along Bear River Drive, formally the Lincoln Highway. This historic building once served as a tourist camp for travelers along this transcontinental highway and serves as one of the few remaining original structures along Wyoming’s portion of the Lincoln Highway. An example of spanish-mission architecture, the Sunset Cabins pose a unique opportunity for historic preservation and redevelopment. The Evanston Historic Preservation Commission is working in conjunction with the Bear River Drive Renaissance Partnership to plan the future of this historic site. In the meantime, the Evanston Historic Preservation Commission has researched the history of this site. Their research has been collected into a historical assessment of the property in order to prepare to designate the property as a Locally Designated Cultural Resource. A public hearing considering this designation was held by the Historic Preservation Commission in July. The Evanston Historic Preservation Commission voted unanimously to recommend to the Evanston City Council that the property be designated as a locally significant cultural resource. The Evanston City Council will consider the designation of this site as a locally significant cultural resource at a work session scheduled for Tuesday August 10th at 5:00pm in the Machine Shop. Pending their discussion, the designation may be considered for approval at the August 17th regular City Council meeting.
See the other Lincoln Highway Markers I’ve found on this page.
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While enjoying – sporadically – an awesome documentary about this old road called 100 Years On The Lincoln Highway, which spent a good deal of time on the Wyoming segments thereof, right after the smile bringing sight of these incredible cabins with built-in garages, came 1 of its downside aspects. Already distressed & disappointed by the long derelict structures leading up to this point, being a lover of older finer architecture rather than the sterile “modern” square/rectangle kind that infest the width & breadth of the land (the transformation thereby of my hometown of Washington being of acutely furious loathing on my part), the rude revelation of such cabins in Evanston in ruins caused me to erupt in frothing invective so intense that I mostly drowned out some male person who was prattling on about how significant/important these dead structures were To This Locality. After a Daffy Duck style “slight pause” for a bit of breath, I went off again In A Rage as to if so, then WHY have they not been restored to a “living” state that the peoples of Evanston & her surrounding region can be really proud of, rare as they are to begin with! I see absolutely nothing about that sad abandoned Empty Shell to which I would point with pride, much less install markers at the place – ain’t no “Ooh!” or Must See factor to THAT. But since the documentary must needs have been made now 11 years ago – a personally painful coincidence since I had rescued a dog from dogfighting that same year, which in November just before my birthday he up & left me for the eternal playground with all my critters before him – I launched a search to get some kind of update that I hoped would include information that these Evanston cabins had indeed been revived in the interim, but NO, there they still are rotting away like a manufactured rather than natural carcass. I do not revile your site for this situation – no “don’t shoot the messenger” protest about it – but whoever IS to blame for it has earned my withering contempt. Of course there’s no way to salvage all of the crumbled properties that this documentary so horribly showed, including the vanishing pathways of that amazing pioneering old road itself, but that only accentuates what to me is the urgent need to Attend Closely the condition of the more unique sites that exist noplace else. I won’t get to see them Upclose & Personal, but those who can & will are another matter – just imagine all those well-preserved wheeled old rattletraps motoring past (if possible) an increasing slate of rubble heaps to equal, except on a larger scale, the piles of rusting refuse the Tin Can Travelers left behind on their adventures: your “proud” representatives of How It Used To Be will, in Captain Kirk’s words, “fade & be forgotten” even more so thereby as merely another indistinguishable relic of Days Gone By. “What a pity,” says me ripping off a line of Dr. Smith’s from now 59 years ago, that instead of joining the gaggle of historical places which showcase the origins of our unmatched highway development (including unfortunately its less than thrilling aspects such as how Interstate 80 caused so much deprivation in its wake), you people wave with misplaced Modest Pride at “a dead hulk” with all the visual appeal of a knocked-down dried-up cactus. Oh well, “so it goes.” Meantime best wishes to all for continued prosperity & health, safety & happiness. “You deserve it!”