We’re getting closer to installing our septic system, which means we’re getting closer to having some of the major infrastructure for our cabin in place.

We have most of the materials now, but before we can actually dig the hole for the septic tank and the trenches for the drainfield, Greg wanted to get as much of the material out to the property as possible.

We need sand underneath the septic tank, gravel around the tank, and then even more gravel for the drainfield trenches.

So Friday became a gravel-hauling day.

Greg and Jaelee made two trips to the rock pit, which is ironically located right near our house in town, and hauled the material out to Thorn Creek. They would load up, drive out to the property, dump it, and then turn around and do it all over again.

They did two loads Friday, and Greg and I made another trip Saturday morning.

There wasn’t much else Greg could work on at the property until we got the materials moved, so after we dumped the load Saturday, I convinced him to do something we’ve been wanting to do for a while.

Explore the property next door.

The Mystery Next Door

Greg has only seen one person working on that property in the almost two years we’ve owned ours. He had talked to them before and found out they were related to the people we bought our property from—the Hucksteps.

What makes the property so interesting is the huge abandoned house sitting up on the hill.

It looks like something straight out of the 1970s.

I’ve been curious about it ever since we bought our property. I wanted to know what was inside and whether it was basically a time capsule.

So when we finally had some time to explore, we walked up the hill toward the house.

And then I saw something I wasn’t expecting.

A huge swimming pool.

An in-ground swimming pool.

And not a little backyard pool. This thing is enormous—more like the size of a pool you’d expect to see at an apartment complex.

I immediately had about a million questions.

Why is there a giant pool here?

Who built it?

Why was it abandoned?

How did they fill something that large with water way up here?

And what was this place?

We continued toward the house. Through the windows, we could see that there wasn’t any furniture left inside. The house looked like it had been empty for a long time, and the sagging roof made it pretty clear that getting too close probably wasn’t a great idea.

There were also massive piles of stuff scattered around the property.

Some looked like garbage. Others were piles of metal. One was almost entirely broken concrete and concrete blocks.

There were two large metal containers that actually looked relatively new, along with huge fuel tanks.

The whole place was fascinating.

I couldn’t wait to get home and start researching.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much cell service out there, so I had to wait until we got back into an area where my phone worked.

The second I had service, I started Googling.

I started with the Hucksteps, since we knew the people who originally owned our property were connected to the family.

And that’s when I started falling down a very deep rabbit hole.

The Hucksteps

The more I learned, the more everything around us started making sense.

The property next door wasn’t just some random abandoned house.

It was part of a much larger family compound connected to the Huckstep family.

William “Bill” Huckstep was a lifelong Idahoan who took over his father’s house-moving business when he was just 16 years old. He eventually operated Huckstep House Moving for decades.

The company specialized in moving all kinds of unusual structures. Their motto was:

“We move anything, large, unusual and odd-shaped objects.”

And apparently they really meant it.

Bill’s business involved salvaging buildings and structures that might otherwise have been demolished. Pieces of historic buildings could be cut apart, moved up mountain roads and reassembled somewhere else.

Suddenly, the strange house next door didn’t seem quite so strange.

And then there was the pool.

The Hucksteps had also owned and operated the historic Warm Springs Resort in Idaho City. Knowing that Bill had experience with large commercial excavation and swimming pool construction made that enormous pool sitting on the hill next door seem a lot less random.

It was starting to look like the property itself was a reflection of the Huckstep family’s unusual history.

But the most interesting discovery for us wasn’t the house or the pool.

It was the water.

Following the Water

We’ve been curious about our water since we bought the property.

We have a cistern on our land, and we knew water was somehow making its way into it, but we weren’t completely sure where it originated.

We had wondered if it was somehow connected to the creek.

After researching the Hucksteps and the history of the property, we started looking more closely at the old water system.

We found an Idaho water right associated with the property dating back to 1969.

The water right describes a gravity-fed system that was engineered to supply the Huckstep family’s extensive property holdings.

And that’s when things got really interesting.

The source wasn’t the creek.

It appeared to be a natural spring located uphill from our property.

The system was designed so water could flow from the spring downhill into a cistern—the very cistern that is sitting on our property today.

That was a pretty exciting discovery.

We’ve spent so much time wondering about the water system, and suddenly we had a very plausible explanation for where our water is coming from.

And if we’re right, it’s coming from a natural mountain spring.

That’s pretty amazing.

We still have more to figure out and verify, but after spending hours researching the old water rights, maps and property history, Greg and I felt pretty confident that we’d finally figured out the mystery.

After all that research, we decided it was time to take a break.

An Evening on the Water

We met the kids at Robie Creek for an evening of paddleboarding, kayaking and fishing.

It was such a nice night.

Greg and Jayse took kayaks out and did some fishing while Jaelee, Brennan and I were on the paddleboards.

I spent most of the evening going back and forth between everyone—paddling around for a while, then grabbing my camera to take pictures.

Jaelee and Brennan were being their usual selves.

They swam, pushed each other off the paddleboard and dock, and generally goofed around.

The weather was beautiful, the scenery was gorgeous, and there were even little signs that fall was starting to creep in.

It was just one of those really sweet evenings that you wish you could bottle up.

That night I headed home with the kids while Greg decided to stay at the property.

He wanted to get up early and work on a few things the next morning.

Finding the Spring

I got up early and drove back out to meet him so we could go hiking together.

One of the things Greg wanted to do was put our trail cameras back up. We’d taken them down for a few months, but with hunting season getting closer, it was time to get them back out.

As we hiked up toward the middle road, we stopped at the old aqueduct and cistern.

This was actually the first time I’d really looked down inside it.

It is huge.

And it was about three-quarters full of water.

Greg opened the valve to let more water into the cistern. At first the water came rushing in, but within a short time it slowed down to a trickle.

Considering it was late summer, that actually made a lot of sense.

Then we started thinking about the spring.

Our neighbor had previously mentioned a swampy area on his property, and now that we’d learned the old water right pointed toward a spring, we wanted to see if we could find it.

So we followed an old, overgrown road toward the neighboring property.

We didn’t have to go far before we started noticing something.

There was simply more water in this area.

The vegetation was greener and thicker. The ground was noticeably wetter. And it was only about 20 feet onto the neighboring property from our property line.

We found the swampy area our neighbor had mentioned.

And standing there, knowing what we’d just learned about the old water system, it was hard not to think…

This has to be it.

We still need to do more investigating before we can say for certain, but everything seems to line up.

The spring.

The old water right.

The cistern.

The gravity-fed system.

It was one of those moments where a bunch of little pieces of information suddenly came together.

And it was pretty exciting.

Up to the Meadow

We decided to keep hiking and eventually made our way toward the top of our property and the meadow.

This is the area where we will eventually build our retirement home.

Greg wanted to put another trail camera up there, but I found myself looking around at the landscape and imagining what it might someday look like with a house sitting there.

It’s funny to stand in a place that is currently just grass, trees and mountain views and try to picture a home.

But I could see it.

I could see why we’d want to spend our later years up there.

After hiking back down, we got back to work.

We continued our never-ending project of reinforcing the metal shed, adding more wood rafters to strengthen it for our heavy snow loads.

After a few hours, we’d had enough and called it a day.

We headed home, where I had put some pork in the crockpot earlier.

Dinner that night was sweet pork burritos, and they were so good we had enough leftovers to eat them again the next night.

Not a bad way to end the weekend.

What started as a weekend of hauling gravel for the septic system turned into something much more interesting.

We discovered a giant abandoned swimming pool, started uncovering the history of the Huckstep family, found an old water right, and may have finally figured out where the water flowing into our cistern comes from.

And that’s one of the things I love about this property.

Every time we go there, we seem to uncover another piece of its story.

Greg moved this small douglus fir tree from one spot to here, he waters it weekly to make sure it survives.