On a 9-by-14-inch paper card, it still exists. The tiny dot of land in western Montana, with a cabin and a garden, where a recluse once wrote a Manifesto, is almost forgotten. The cabin is no more, removed years ago to help build a case against the owner or prove him insane. The garden, the root cellar and the man known as the Unabomber have all become part of the past.

It was a dream for both brothers: Montana. To live off the land, to retreat from the modern world, to connect with nature. They considered other places, like Alaska, but Montana won out. In 1971, Ted Kaczynski, who would be the target of one of the longest FBI manhunts in history, bought 1.4 acres in the tiny town of Lincoln  with his brother, David, for $2,100.

In 1972, Kaczynski began living on the small plot. It was there he lived alone for more than two decades.

The land, known in the Lewis and Clark County land office in Helena as Section 5 Township 13 Range 8, or Humbug Contour Road 30, is just a dot on the map. A wooded lot on a dirt road, there is not much to distinguish it from the surrounding woods. The cabin was perfect for avoiding contact with the outside world. And aside from the less than $100 the state of Montana asked for each year, the outside world left it alone. Until the FBI began a stakeout of the property in 1996 to snare the man they believed to be the Unabomber, it barely existed to anyone at all.

What agents found when they advanced on the property in the spring of 1996 was a sloping wooded lot and a small clearing. Pines and aspens covered most of the well-kept property. There was a small vegetable garden under the snow, and a compost pile. A small fire pit. A block and ax for firewood. A 10-by-12 foot cabin with a hand pump and wash basin. Two hundred and thirty-two books, typewriters, chemicals and other evidence tying Ted Kaczynski to the series of bombings he conducted over 17 years.

Apart from the cabin, the only other structure was a root cellar, mostly empty except for some potatoes and vegetables. The FBI filled in the cellar soon after searching it for evidence.

Photos © by Richard Barnes
Photographer Richard Barnes originally photographed the Unabomber cabin on assignment for the New York Times magazine in 1998. At that time the cabin was in a warehouse in California, where it was being stored as evidence. Wanting to juxtapose the image he refers to as the “incarcerated cabin” with an image of the cabin’s wooded  setting, Barnes traveled to Lincoln to photograph the site where the cabin had stood. (Click photos to enlarge)

For a little piece of land, there were a lot of papers in the county file: tax papers, data collection forms, property tax assessments, and letters from the owner. When the manhunt finally netted Kaczynski, the FBI seized the property records as evidence.

Applications for government tax assistance, low-income housing exemptions, and any other paperwork associated with the land at Humbug Contour Road 30 were always accompanied by lengthy hand-written letters, arriving at the county offices meticulously addressed in Kaczynski’s neat, even hand. But anything Kaczynski sent to the offices became part of the case against him, and now only the Land & Title division’s assessment card remains.

Nancy Hallett lived with her ex-husband in Lincoln through the arrest and trial. In 2001, she moved to Helena where she now works in the county offices. Friendly and engaging, she can point to the property on a map in an instant, but finding the assessment card is more challenging.

Eventually Hallett finds the Residential Data Collection form for Humbug Contour Road 30. It is a single card, listing the property owner as Joy Richards of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. There are boxes with numbers describing improvements and a photo of the cabin when it still stood. The card and single page of taxes assessed and paid by the woman to whom Kaczynski sold his portion of the land in 2001 are all that can be found.

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It was the Manifesto that first caught Joy Richards’ attention. “I thought it was brilliant,” she says. “His ideas are what really matter, and I thought his ideas were brilliant.”

At the time of the Manifesto’s publication, Joy Richards was living in Lincoln, though she didn’t know Kaczynski. It wasn’t until after Kaczynski’s arrest in 1996 that she began the correspondence that has lasted 10 years - a correspondence that has led to friendship and the ownership of the land where Kaczynski’s cabin once stood.

Originally the taxes needed to be paid, so Richards made some payments for Kaczynski. That eventually turned into a desire to own the land, to prevent it from being exploited.

“I think mostly the land was significant at first because he had lived there,” she says. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t bought up by some logger and just cleared.”

Richards had it assessed, and the land in its entirety was found to be worth $15,000. After approval from the state, Kaczynski’s lawyers made the deal possible. She bought Kaczynski’s portion for $7,000 in 2001. At first, David Kaczynski hung on to his part of the 1.4 acre parcel, but over time he and Richards worked out a deal. Two years after purchasing Ted Kaczynski’s portion, she bought David’s as well.
Richards and Ted Kaczynski correspond often, but not on any regular schedule.
“It is what it is,” Richards says.

Over the years, many things have been written about Kaczynski’s time in Lincoln, and more people claim to know Kaczynski now than he probably knew then, but Richards doesn’t make any claims. She prefers to keep the contents of their letters to herself. She has given only one interview, when the Sacramento Bee found out she and Kaczynski’s lawyers were working on the exchange of Kaczynski’s part of the land. She wasn’t happy about the result.

“The way things were worded, some of it was wrong,” she says.

As for Lincoln, she hasn’t been back in a while. So far, she has succeeded in preserving her land from logging or pollution. She originally wished to build a small cabin on the land and leave the rest as nature intended. She still likes that idea.

Today a chain-link fence marking the area where the cabin once stood is the last remnant of the FBI’s investigation and of Ted Kaczynski’s life in Lincoln. The carefully tended garden where potatoes, carrots and turnips grew has gone to weed. The compost heap has been spread out, searched through for evidence and left to return to the earth.

The land is open now. As far as the government is concerned, HCR 30, where a killer lived for decades, is gone forever. But for Richards, the land will remain a sanctuary. Someday, perhaps, another cabin will be built there. She hopes to return to Lincoln soon.