Somewhere in MT. The "road", more like trail, leading up to this little valley was basically stacked out of rocks on the side of the mountain. And hadn't even had an ATV on it in many, many years. Makes me wonder what this was originally built for? There was a corral off to the side. Even the square boards were axe hewn. Only straight edges were the edges sawn off for the door and window frames. The main logs were all axe hewn as well. I have only seen a few cabins completely axe built like this. Even cabins from around the turn of the 20th century were often only face cuts on the trees and then sawn on the backside for the final cut for felling. With the size of the trail, I figure that maybe they were mining and sending ore down the side of the mountain somehow.
This was a water cistern. They pumped water up to fill this from the stream bed may be 100 feet below. It was re-surfaced a few times after the first time it was abandon.
I rehabbed this old grape arbor yesterday. It was literally in danger of falling over flat. Guy had stacked all his garden bean poles leaning against it and the garden never made it the last couple years. Posts and rafter beams had no corner bracing at all and just wired together. I straightened it up, put in braces and screws to hold it together. Put all the bean poles on top to act as runners for the vines instead of pushing it sideways.
I put those buckets with no bottom in them around the posts and been spitting grape seeds in them for a year now. Finally bought two new vines for the empty ones so to be a vine on each post now.
Don't do that with the buckets until the new vines have a good start up the posts. The lack of sun light will kill a new vine. Put a wrap of chicken wire around the post before you plant will really get the vine up that post fast.