Pine Valley Guard Station
Thanks to some creative negotiation, Pine Valley Guard Station will be renovated
—and made available to the public to rent.
The building's story
The Pine Valley Guard Station, which sits in an alpine valley north of St. George, was a Civilian Conservation Corps project. Forest Service architect George Nichols designed it, and the CCC boys built it in 1935.
For more than a century, people have been coming to the Pine Valley Mountains to play and rest. This Guard Station housed the staff in charge of the Forest Service’s recreation facilities.
However, in recent decades, the building has suffered an onslaught of age—not to mention onslaughts from animals, water, wind, and vandalism.
The rescue
Fortunately, a federal law, a thoughtful public agency, and the State Historic Preservation Office have come to the rescue.
The Dixie National Forest decided to sell four unused historic buildings in Enterprise, Utah. However, when a federal agency does something to affect a historic property, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 requires the agency to mitigate the effect.
The easy thing to do would be to simply document the buildings and say goodbye.
But through dialogue with our State Historic Preservation Office, the Dixie National Forest decided to do more than simply “document and destroy.” The agency will use money from the sale of the buildings to rehabilitate the Pine Valley Guard Station.
When it's done, you can rent this building!
Right now, this classic forest building has broken windows and door, a roof and chimney in need of repair, rodent and bird damage, and more. Once all that is fixed, the Dixie National Forest will open it up to the public as part of its Rustic Rental program.
Although we, the public, are losing the historic Enterprise site due to its transfer out of federal ownership, we are gaining a beautifully rehabilitated building at Pine Valley that will be preserved for use for many years to come.