Hey everyone, long time lurker, first post. Of all the Aviation boards I've been on, BCP is my fave.
Knowledgeable folks, less posing, more helpful. Glad to have the resource and hope to meet you sometime.

The Son and I have a few (very few) greenbacks and we're talking of doing a backcountry cabin.
You guys all cover lot of ground: where would you get land for an off grid cabin?

Usual things, should be near some type of road, airstrip nearby-ish, tourist-free, and the dirt is cheap.
My nirvana would have winter snow, hot springs, and fishy summers. A gal can dream, right?
I'm also in a tired old 150, <500hrs, and west coast based.

So, Guys - where would you build your piece of heaven?

Good thread idea! If I lived in Portland, I would probably look somewhere on the East side of the Cascades. That way you could scoot up the Gorge during bad weather. The weather will be a big factor in how often you can get away if you are going for airplane access.

Stuart Island in the San Juans is pretty awesome! There are already two strips, and land is not very expensive. Of course, you can only access it by boat or plane, and you need to carry in pretty much everything you use.

Of course you say accessible by road, so Somewhere near McKenzie Bridge might be nice.

Usual things, should be near some type of road, airstrip nearby-ish, tourist-free, and the dirt is cheap.
My nirvana would have winter snow, hot springs, and fishy summers. A gal can dream, right?

I often dream about the same thing. The "dirt is cheap" part seems to be difficult to find without sacrificing most of the others except tourist-free. I would say,in your neck of the woods, Lake County or Harney County is where to look to find most of your criteria.

Harney County has some pretty class places to go. A concern might be that "tired old C150" on a warm summer day because of altitude. But there's plenty of places with lots of room for a long runway.

Gump

We fly up to Harney County fairly often to visit the wife's aunt and uncle who have a 3,000 acre spread some 38 nm east of Burns. Land the Husky in the alfalfa field next to the ranch house.

There's some smaller places closer in to Burns in the flat land, but once you get east of Crane into the mountains, the ranches tend to be larger and there's a lot of BLM land. Though I haven't looked for property there, I'd think there wouldn't be much in the way parcels sized at a few acres.

I like the high desert a lot, but prefer more the timberland that's further east - - past the OR/ID border.

bumper

I think Fields Station is up for sale. Hell, buy the whole town.



And last I looked, Ravendale (CA) was on the market. Another "town" and it has a nice county maintained runway right at the motel.



Gump

Last year one at caveman one of the lovely ladies who love taildraggers was spraying about the piece she and her hubby locked in Nevada that abutted BLM land. They trucked in two shipping containers and finished the interior into what sounded like heaven to me. I've been dreaming about it ever since. The pictures were fantastic.

soyAnarchisto wrote:Last year one at caveman one of the lovely ladies who love taildraggers was spraying about the piece she and her hubby locked in Nevada that abutted BLM land. They trucked in two shipping containers and finished the interior into what sounded like heaven to me. I've been dreaming about it ever since. The pictures were fantastic.

Sounds great, any idea where this Nevada land is?

I'm lucky to have everything you mentioned.... Airstrip (1250'), fishy (stocked ponds, rivers and creeks), accessible by road, etc. Brother trapped a 150# wolf this year about 100 yds west of the front door. The dirt was not cheap but the value of the place has more than quadrupled since we bought it in '92. Fires came through in 2001 and killed nearly all our old growth timber. We had most of it logged and years of hard work and planting have brought back many that are up to 15' now (pondies, whites, larch, etc.). It used to be that you couldn't see the smaller pond from the cabin.

46 miles to Moose Creek... 42 miles to Chamberlain... really 95% of the idaho strips are withing a 60 mile radius. Pretty awesome place really.

Good luck to you!

In my dream, roads could be eliminated, but the short strip and water (river, ocean, or big lake) would be needed. If you have been up the Trench, Ft Graham would be perfect for me (I wouldn't have to change the sign either).

I'd go north central washington, anywhere from twisp, conconully, tonasket or oroville, land is cheap once you leave the valley bottom, all have paved strips except conconully, would have to land at omak if one couldn't find a farmer willing to let you land in his field. Trout fishing is great, snow, no more than 2-3 feet, great area.

Check out Saratoga Wyoming. Pretty much meets all your requirements. Snowy winters,fishy summers, limited tourists and dirt cheap. Decent airport. The town motto is "where the trout jump on main street." Oh, and they have plenty of hot springs.

Heck, just bring a camp trailer up and park it off the end of my strip,Try it out for awhile. 14 miles sw 63S.
Have about everything here within an hour, river, lakes, ski areas.
GT

cogito wrote:Sounds great, any idea where this Nevada land is?

No clue now. Assuming west or northwest Nevada. Some of the Elko guys are sure to know, I can't remember.

Just do a search for "Cheap Nevada Land". There are a lot of people picking up tax sale land and dividing it. I have see 160 acres go for $800 at tax sales and then it shows up on sites split into smaller lots for a whole bunch more. It usually goes from $500 up an acre depending on how big the parcels are. Ebay sells a lot of them too.

Yup... eBay.

Add a few beers before you start bidding, and you'll be a land baron before you know it. Don't ask how I know this.

Gump

Wow, thanks everyone! As I suspected, lots of good info on what (and what not) to buy.
This got started when at a friends in Big Bear Lake, and the house next door was 40k.
Looked around, saw Airport, Ski Hill, Fish Lake, said hmm. Bit too touristy, but...
figured I could get a 'yurt in the dirt' somewhere until I can build something.

Family is Cali based, so was hoping for closer, but I've done Hot Springs tours of the Sawtooths
and have nothing against ID or WY. North of Truckee seems nice, but scant info.

This was easier when I was in Canada, 10 miles out of Town and you're in the beyond

Lots of options North of Truckee and south of Susanville!

East of Bishop, too. Either just over the border into Nevada or in the central valley. But for your money outta portland, I'd go eastern OR or WA.

Several years ago, I started looking at 640 acre parcels, wanting one that I could use to escape the pressures of civilization. I eventually found one that I liked well enough to buy, although I still haven't scraped together the cash to put in my airstrip and mansion.

The search was quite educational. I learned:
If an eBay land seller is honest, then he's probably incompetent. They will copy/paste their ad numerous times for different pieces of ground, and in the process forget to update the GPS coordinates, the county parcel number, or the range/township/section numbers, and when you try to find the parcel, it ends up being in a different county than where they claimed.

One common eBay trick is to show pictures of the "general area". Or, they will claim "views of the XYZ Mountains", and only show pictures of the XYZ Mountains. This is because they don't want to show the salt flat that they are selling.

Google Earth is a fantastic resource for checking out land. However, for remote parcels of land there is often no official street address. The seller will usually post the range, township, and section number, which Google Earth doesn't understand. You can go to earthpoint.us website and click on "Township and Range / Search by Description" and it will either give you the GPS coordinates, or you have the option of letting it launch Google Earth for you and it will draw a square around the section.

Here are a couple of more Google Earth tips:
Use the perspective view to look east and west from the property to give you an idea of what your sunrises and sunsets will look like.

Click "View / Sun", and it will draw the sun's shadows and give a time slider. Zoom in and out on the time slider, and you can use it to find out when the sun hits the land at sunrise, and when the sun sets at different times of the year. This is invaluable if the land is in a canyon or next to a mountain, especially if you want to use solar power.

If you're looking at land in eastern Oregon or northern Nevada, look for sand dunes near the property. Sand dunes don't form unless the area has extremely high wind!

Look at the elevations of any nearby residences you spot on Google Earth. If they drilled a well, and if they're at the same elevation or higher, you should also be able to drill a well. If you're a thousand or more feet higher on a rock, you might be out of luck.

Finally, it's quite helpful to look at the historical temperature, precipitation, and snowfall totals at the Western Regional Climate Center.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/summary/Climsmor.html