Messerer Trapper Cabin
The Swan Valley was homesteaded in the early 1900s. Many homesteaders relied on income from trapping to pay taxes and to purchase food and supplies they weren’t able to produce on their land.
Fred Messerer lived on the Swan Clearwater Divide and made a living trapping furbearing animals in the Mission Mountains from the late 1920s through WWII.
Fred built this cabin as part of his trap line. It was situated on a knob above Lindbergh Lake, near where the Elbow Lookout later stood. Fred had built a couple of small shelters like this one hidden in the mountains where he could stay while checking his trap lines. He camouflaged his traps so other trappers wouldn’t find them, a common practice.
After WWII, Fred was employed in the Swan Valley at the Wineglass Mill, where he worked nights as a cleanup man. He was a good storyteller, according to Swan Valley resident Boyd Kessler who worked at the mill.
Fred told a story that Boyd later retold to Suzanne Vernon as part of the Swan Valley Oral History Project. The story was published in Montana Voices of the Swan, p, 170.
Fred said, “I’m setting these traps out there and it snowed overnight, so the traps were even harder to find. But I had to go to the bathroom real bad, and found a place to squat down. I caught my own testicles in that trap! But that wasn’t the worst hurt in the world. The worst hurt in the world was when I hit the end of the chain.”
When the U.S. Forest Service wanted to destroy Messerer’s old trapper cabin in 1975, Swan Valley residents Sharon and Dan MacQuarrie purchased it for a dollar to ensure it’s preservation. The cabin was moved log by log to their home at Cygnet Lake and reassembled.
In summer 2014, the MacQuarries donated the cabin to the Swan Valley Museum and Heritage Site.
In the cabin are displays of traps, snowshoes, hide stretchers, photographs and other artifacts to tell the story of early day trapping in the Swan Valley.
