Long before the Tilden Cabin became a campaign to save, it was simply home.

In 1893, brothers Fred and Horace Tilden came north under a Wisconsin program meant to open the Northwoods to homesteaders. They expected land on Silver Lake. They were sent six miles south instead, to the shoreline between Meta Lake and Cranberry — and they stayed.

They camped in tents. They built tarpaper shacks. They raised their first log home in 1900. And in 1903 — the year a document signed by President Theodore Roosevelt granted them the homestead outright — they built the first log cottage and opened the Tilden Brothers Resort, among the first generation of resorts to promote what this region could become.

That 1903 cottage is the cabin at the heart of this campaign. It is more than 120 years old, and it is one of the last early Northwoods resort buildings still standing.

The deadline is real

The property where the cabin sits today has been sold. It must be moved before October. A Northwoods winter doesn't wait.

A name that stayed in the family

Florence Tilden — daughter of Fred and Lena Tilden — was raised on these grounds from infancy. She was a horsewoman and barrel racer who kept eight horses of her own and was still placing at local rodeos well into adulthood. When she married Willard "Bill" Godding at St. John's Episcopal Church, the resort and its name stayed in the family.

Bill and Florence bought the Tilden in 1950 and ran it for decades: cottages along the lakeshore, horses that doubled as logging teams, an American Plan dining hall because none of the cottages had kitchens, and guests who came back summer after summer. A former summer ranch hand remembered them this way: "Florence and Bill, may they rest in peace knowing all the good they've done for others will never be forgotten."

Their sons, Fred and Jack Godding, grew up on that same shoreline. Jack — now 84 — is a master carpenter whose life's work has been building things meant to last. The 1903 cabin served as his workshop for forty years.

In 2026, he donated it to the Eagle River Historical Society.

Why this matters now

Early Northwoods resort buildings — the small, hand-built cabins that defined this region's first era of tourism — are disappearing fast as properties change hands. Most are already gone.

The Tilden Cabin is one of the last still standing. Saving it saves the structure where the Tilden family's Northwoods story began, the building Fred and Jack Godding grew up beside, and the legacy of Florence Tilden Godding herself.

Read the full history — and Jack's own memoir — at eagleriverhistory.org/tildencabin

⭐ A $5,000 challenge gift

Laurie Frykholm has pledged $5,000 in honor of her late father, Walter "Terry" Frykholm. It unlocks when the community raises $5,000 in new gifts. Every dollar you give right now does double duty.

The goal: $25,000 by September 15

Not a dollar goes to overhead. Every gift moves, stabilizes, and preserves the cabin.

• Professional relocation $9,650

• Site preparation $4,000

• Foundation & installation $5,000

• Stabilization & preservation work $4,000

• Contingency reserve $2,350

What your gift makes possible

The Eagle River Historical Society will preserve the cabin and share it as part of its Heritage Center — a place future generations can walk into, touch, and understand. Unlike a gift to operating expenses, this is something you can show your grandchildren someday and say: I helped save that.

Prefer to give by check?

Make it payable to the Eagle River Historical Society and mail to:

Save the Cabin

P.O. Box 2011

Eagle River, WI 54521

The cabin has survived Wisconsin winters, a changing Northwoods, and more than 120 years of history. It has one more challenge ahead of it.

With your help, it wins.