A bonfire amid a slushy downpour Tuesday finished off the “Mud Bay Institute,” a ramshackle, beachfront cabin on Chilkat Inlet that provided refuge to wayward characters and wandering souls.
Former resident “Wild” Bill Biggerstaff, a self-described pot smuggler and dealer, said he lived at the Mud Bay Road property 12 years, owing mostly to the generosity of landlord Pat King of Washington and the tolerance of neighbor Beth MacCready.
King charged only $150 a month rent and MacCready put up with rowdy parties.
“It was a fish camp. In the early days that I was there, it was a circus. We must have had 100 fist fights, but it was mostly under control,” Biggerstaff said in a phone interview from Florida Tuesday.
Although the uninsulated building was heated only by a barrel stove, Biggerstaff ran around in bare feet that friends remembered being black with dirt. The cabin’s summer-only plumbing was from a pipe connected to a creek out back.
“It was a wonderful time when I was there. They say it has a million-dollar view, but it’s $10 million, I think. It’s priceless. I was honored to live there,” Biggerstaff said. “I have thousands of photos and videos of the place.”
Biggerstaff said his memories included tethering himself to the cabin to ensure his return during a trip to the outhouse in a blinding snowstorm. Another time, a taxi driver saved him from a charging cow moose by driving into the animal’s way.
Other Institute tenants included Benner Jones, a rough-around-the-edges outdoorsman, and Marilyn Gunn, a recycling center operator and baseball fan who left Haines to chase a dream of working at Tiger Stadium.
In 1988, Jones had ex-girlfriend Margaret Sebens pose as his mate to convey an image of respectability when he was interviewing to rent the place, Sebens said this week. “Pat King was a religious lady and she wanted a married couple in there.”
But the cabin wasn’t suited to family living, Sebens said. “It was definitely a rough, bachelor-type place, but you couldn’t beat the view.”
While Gunn was living there in 2005, a November flood that washed out Mud Bay Road knocked a hole in the house and filled it with gravel. The Uglys of Haines, who were using a nearby building on the property as their clubhouse, helped excavate the place and prop it back up.
Biggerstaff said Jones dubbed the place “The Mud Bay Institute of Higher Technology” for reasons apparently lost to history, but the name stuck.
Jones died in a commercial plane crash near Glacier Bay in 1991. When Jones’ mother came to town to settle his estate, she became so enamored of the property she wanted to buy it, Sebens said. “A lot of people fell in love with that place.”
Sebens said she was saddened by the recent sale of the property. “It was a place poor people lived that had a great view and access to the water. There aren’t many places like that left.”
Uglys president Chuck Mitman said he considered buying the property from King, but its small size and proximity to the Mud Bay Road right-of-way dissuaded him. “I thought if I could invest, I could do better than that.”
Mitman said the cabin was a “Lego-type thing,” made with stacked 6-by-6’ timbers that were rotting near the structure’s foundation. The Uglys used the property for fundraising picnics for years, he said. “We’ll miss it. It was a good place for parties.”
Neighboring landowner MacCready, who has bought the property, said she tore down the cabin because it was rotting. She said she has no plans for the site. “It’s going to be a green zone for a while.”
MacCready said several people have talked to her recently about the good memories they had of the Institute. “I knew there was going to be sadness.”