1930 Willow Creek Cabin on Forest Service Land, Stone Fireplace — $69,000

The creek is the whole point. Willow Creek runs along this property about 8 or 9 miles outside Chester, and the cabin is close enough that you hear it from inside. That's what you're paying for, and it's the thing you'd remember after a visit.

The cabin itself was built in 1930 and runs about 1,023 square feet. The main living space is a great room with open beams and exposed rafters overhead, and a stone fireplace at the center of it. The fireplace is big and well-built, the kind that makes the room. A loft sits above, usable as a sleeping space. Below the main level there's a room with concrete and rock walls, which is unusual and cool in a rough, old-building way.

The shutters have tree cutouts on them. It's a small detail but it's genuinely specific to this place and someone put thought into it.

The setting is Plumas National Forest, and the whole Willow Creek Homesites area runs off the grid, so this is a seasonal cabin, not a year-round house. If you need reliable power and heat in January, this is not the setup for that.

There's a land situation worth understanding clearly. The property sits on U.S. Forest Service leased land. You own the cabin; you lease the ground it sits on. The 2024 annual lease payment is $2,528, and that rate holds through 2028. Buyers need to contact the Forest Service directly to get the full details on lease terms and requirements. That's a real cost and a real process, and it affects how you'd finance and use the property.

At $69,000 for a 94-year-old creekside cabin in the national forest, the price reflects what this is: a rough, old, interesting place in a beautiful spot that someone will need to put work into. The bones are distinctive. The creek is right there. The rest depends on how much you want to be out in the woods and what condition you find it in when you walk through.