Churubusco Lodge Estate

Property Description

At the heart of the estate stands the Churubusco Lodge, a 19th-century hand-hewn timber frame measuring 30’×40′ with 27-foot clear-span ceilings, connected to an 18’×38′ rustic hunting camp. The frame carries a genuine provenance rarely found in a structure like this: it originally stood on the owner’s Vermont farm, was carefully dismantled piece by piece, transported, and reassembled on the shore of Lodge Pond. It sits on a modern foundation with 8-foot poured concrete walls and a full basement, giving the lodge a stable, livable base without disturbing the character of the frame above. Inside, the original hand-hewn timbers remain fully exposed, a soaring, 27-foot span overhead that few new structures can replicate.

Outside, the lodge is finished in board-and-batten siding over rigid insulation, giving it a clean, weathertight exterior that still reads as a historic camp rather than a new build. The lodge sits directly on its own pond, more than 20 acres in size. Power is currently off-grid, supplied by a small photovoltaic system; the setup could readily be expanded for a new owner who wants greater capacity, or a grid connection could be pursued separately.

Water defines the estate at a scale rarely found under single ownership. Beyond Lodge Pond, Lake Alex forms the estate’s other major water feature, and numerous smaller ponds are scattered throughout the property, each reached via its own interconnected network of trails, allowing a new owner to explore the water on foot or by ATV without retracing the same ground twice. Natural springs and small streams run throughout the land as well, feeding the pond systems and supporting healthy wildlife populations across all seasons. Together, this density of water supports fishing, paddling, and waterfowl hunting, alongside the upland hunting the surrounding forest offers for whitetail deer, black bear, and upland birds. The property is further developed for serious hunting use, with multiple large clearings cut as shooting lanes up to 300 yards long, each anchored by an elevated blind at its ends, with infrastructure already in place for a new owner rather than something to be built from scratch.