This well-known building housed one of the last true mountain men of the American West. In 1873, Jim Baker tired of "big city" life near Denver and built this cabin by hand at age 55. The home now sits about one mile from its original site. It was one of the only permanent buildings in a land inhabited mostly by the transient Shoshone and Arapaho.
In addition to housing Baker's family, the cabin served as a trading post. Right before the Meeker Massacre, it acted as a fort for valley settlers, and a third story was added as a lookout. Inside the cabin, visitors can see a buffalo hide bull boat, a rope bed, a bearskin, and other Jim Baker artifacts.
The cabin was housed for almost 60 years in Frontier Park in Cheyenne, Wyoming before being relocated here in 1976. Jim Baker died in 1898 and is buried nearby in the Baker Cemetery along with many of his family members and decendents. The Madeline House, also located at the museum, belonged to his daughter Madeline Baker Adams.
