Into the 50’s the Kirsch family rented rooms to hunters and fishermen from Anchorage.  Even today local roads follow the routes the Kirsches made to fishing grounds.

After John Kirsch died in 1959, the place was acquired by a homesteading family who raised 9 children here leaving in the early 70’s.  The lodge lay in wait until the present owner found it in 1988. 

Restoration began in 1993, when the building was moved and a full basement built on the original location and then returned.

Every effort was made to re-use the original construction materials. The interior of the lodge had become literally black with smoke from kerosene lamps and woodstoves. Every knot-free Douglas Fir wall and ceiling board was taken down, planed, sanded and replaced after plumbing, wiring, sound deadening and fireproofing was installed.  The boards inside the walls were also Douglas Fir and many have been re-worked into furniture grade appointments throughout the building. One 2 X 4 was found to have 89 growth rings across it’s 3 ½ inch width!

Despite the luxurious accommodation Fireweed Station has become today, it is simply not possible to visit here without feeling the sense you are on the frontier of 1940’s Alaska.

Any doubts this area was America’s last frontier vanish at Montana Red’s cabin up the tracks. Red is known to old timers around here as having been the younger of the Younger Brothers of outlaw fame. Red lived out his life in a cabin about 8 miles up the tracks about the size of Sydney Thayer’s cabin here at the Inn.