Sylvan Ambrose Hart

Sylvan Ambrose "Buckskin Bill" Hart (May 10, 1906 – April 29, 1980) was among the last of the mountain men in the Western United States.

[3] He purchased fifty acres (20 ha) of land at Five Mile Bar for one dollar,[1] where he built a compound that included a two-story house, blacksmith shop, a stone turret, and a bomb shelter.

The defensive structures reflected his sense of continual threat from the federal government, which peaked in 1956 when Howard Zahniser's Wilderness Act threatened to designate the Five Mile section of the Salmon River as a non-habitable Primitive Area, and he was in danger of being evicted.

[4][5] Hart volunteered to serve in World War II, but due to an enlarged heart, he was assigned to a Boeing plant in Kansas where he worked on the Norden bombsight.

He farmed, hunted and fished for survival, and made his own guns, weapons, clothing and tools.