
Naturalist Edwin Carter began collecting and preserving local wildlife specimens in 1868. He housed them in this log cabin with a shed addition and ornate porch posts with four-leaf clover cutout brackets. In 1900 Carter's heirs sold his incomparable collection of Colorado specimens for $10,000 as the core collection of the Denver Museum of Natural History. His rustic, hewn log cabin, set in a large meadow, exemplifies the mining camp stage of log architecture. In 1993, the town of Breckenridge and the Summit Historical Society paid $1 million for this little cabin—and the large open field where it sits—preserving one of the most developable sites in Breckenridge as open space and a natural history house museum.