October is cabin season. The leaves, resplendent in orange, yellow and red, rippling over the mountains. The birds singing in the overhead boughs. The crisp breeze swirling with the still-warm-on-your-cheeks sunshine. Family and good friends laughing over s’mores made over an outdoor fire, the harvest moon hanging low overhead.
Autumn is particularly glorious in the Ozarks, notes Cortney Gabel, who enjoyed escaping to her stepfather’s cabin in Hootentown while a college student at Missouri State University.
The cabin remained in Gabel’s mind after she graduated with a degree in business management and a minor in interior design and began working full-time in real estate. “I remembered the secluded cabin vibes it gave me, and I decided I wanted to start a new business adventure,” she says. “The vision of a unique rustic-meets-creative-modern cabin filled my brain.”
In 2020, she purchased the cabin and set to work renovating it, drawing on skills she honed while studying abroad in Italy and Greece during college and from what she learned from her grandfather and step-father — her “construction role models” — to create a woodland retreat for families, couples and friends.
She opened Ivory Gabel Cabin that October. Since then, her company, Gabel Cabins, has expanded to include two other properties between the Rolla and Salem areas, each with their own feel and theme: Bronze Gabel, a custom-build treehouse-like steel-framed cabin with bronze metal accents and Emerald Gabel, a renovated log cabin with hints of emerald green.
Each Gabel Cabin has a story. For example, Hootentown, the site of Ivory Gabel, dates to the early 1900s. “It was a development area. The railroad and lumber industries were supposed to build up the town in expansion and growth,” she says. “However, the Frisco Railroad did not come to this area as promised, which stopped growth.”
Today, the Hootentown Bridge remains, and Hootentown Canoe Rental is located by the bridge. The family-owned business has been around since 1993 and offers tubes, kayaks, a grocery store, camping and fishing. “Guests at Ivory Gabel Cabin can walk down to the James River for any outdoor adventure,” she notes.
Over the years, Gabel has delighted in hosting guests and weddings as well as offering workshops and special events, such as yoga retreats, candle-making classes, holistic wellness retreats, nature camps and bird watching. She is happiest when she is helping others create memories, such as offering guests add-ons for events, such as a pretzel bar or coffee bar.
Like her other two properties, Ivory Gabel Cabin is encircled by forest, allowing guests to feel they have escaped to the woods, but with all the amenities — and special touches. “Guests can add on gourmet s’mores bar or Champagne prepared at arrival,” Gabel says. “And newlyweds receive a homestead breakfast basket.”
Born and raised on a cattle farm in Salem, Gabel understands the value and hard work that goes into homesteading and supports farms and artisans, such as Creek & Hollow Homestead, Zimmerman Meats, Ozark Mountain Coffee Company and Wofford Homestead candles. Most of the artwork in the cabins are created by local artists and are available for purchase.
And pumpkins. Let’s not forget the pumpkins. “We buy nearly 300 pumpkins from a local pumpkin patch each year to decorate the cabins’ driveways, porches and surroundings,” Gabel says. “In November guests can take a pumpkin home with them. Plus, our deer friends love the pumpkins as a tasty snack and visit often.”
Explore the cabins at GabelCabins.com.