Cabin In The Crazies Sparks Concern Over Wild Lands

A decades-long battle in Montana’s Crazy Mountains is heating up as more family farms and ranches are bought out by corporations and millionaires. What was once quiet ranch country is now pushing deeper into the heart of one of Montana’s most rugged wilderness areas.

The latest flashpoint is a one-room log cabin recently built on the east shore of Twin Lakes. This is the first permanent structure inside the Crazies’ wilderness core. To many, it’s more than just a cabin; it’s a symbol of something bigger: the creeping privatization of our wildest public places.

The cabin sits on a private inholding owned by David Leuschen, a former Goldman Sachs executive and co-founder of a private equity firm. Hikers and locals say it represents a shift in what this landscape means.

Longtime wilderness advocate John Gatchell calls it the start of a dangerous precedent: “It's just the beginning of the erosion and loss of the public values that are there and the wildness of that place that makes it special.” And that’s the concern, some places aren’t meant to be possessed. They’re meant to stay wild, sacred, untamed. The Crazy Mountains have always been that kind of place.

Leuschen already owns the Lazy K Bar Ranch at the base of the Crazies and the massive Switchback Ranch, one of the largest cattle operations in the Northern Rockies. Attempts to reach him for comment weren’t successful.

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What do you think? Is this to far? He has the right, but it feels like we’re losing something bigger—the last pieces of Montana that still stand truly wild.