Shorty Lovelace Historic District

Between 1910 and 1940, fur trapper Joseph Walter "Shorty" Lovelace built a network of small cabins and boulder shelters across the South Fork of the Kings River watershed, in what is now Kings Canyon National Park. He may have built as many as thirty-six; nine sites have been located. Most are one-room log huts with dirt floors and shake roofs, seldom larger than 5 by 7 feet. Two larger cabins at Crowley Canyon, built about 1912, are now ruins. Only the cabins at Cloud Canyon and Vidette Meadow remain sound enough to preserve, while the others are decaying or collapsed. The district was recognized as a rare record of an alpine fur trapping circuit. Lovelace was the only person to live year-round in the upper Kings Canyon region, and he was among the last full-time trappers of the western fur trade. Because the park has been managed largely as wilderness, the sites keep natural settings.