Posted on 04/16/2010 5:16:35 AM PDT by jay1949
Vintage settler's cabins are rare finds, as most of them didn't survive very long. Many thousands of these shelters were built during the early history of the Backcountry, constructed quickly and simply of peeled logs, often with no windows. The cabin depicted here was located in the Rich Valley of Virginia and was photographed in 1880. [Picture is linked because of claimed library restrictions]
(Excerpt) Read more at backcountrynotes.com ...
Mountain Folk and Log Cabins Ping List
That cabin is in serious need of chinking!
better than sleeping outside, probably
Most interesting.
That's racist!
I let a piece of property with a 1790s cabin slip through my fingers last year. Of all the “kick me” houses I have let go by, that is the one I will regret the most.
“It has had a metal building build over it to protect it”
I would like to see more log cabins sheltered in this way. Too many of them have been “restored” by well-meaning amateurs and then left to rot in exposed settings. For an unfortunate example of this, see the second cabin (Alexander Breckenridge) in this article: http://www.backcountrynotes.com/society-and-culture/2009/7/18/log-houses-of-abingdon-virginia.html
Maybe photographed in the summer — rustic AC?
Being small and usually windowless would make them easier to heat in cold weather. But talk about “cabin fever” . . . .
For many years my Dad told me he knew where the original sod house one of my great-great-grandfathers built when they were breaking up the prairie in Clinton Township, Sac County, Iowa was.
A couple of years before he died I begged him to finally show me. So we went for a drive out in the country and he couldn’t find it. Actually, he couldn’t even find the right farm. The countryside had changed too much since he grew up there in the 30s and 40s. Too many family homesteads bulldozed and gone as the land has passed into fewer and fewer hands. All his mental landmarks were gone.
I’m also a direct descendant of Joel and Patsy Estes, the discoverers of what became Estes Park, Colorado. We know exactly where their cabin was, but unfortunately it’s now under a lake! :-)
I asked an old timer from the area about it and he speculated it was probably made and used by a fur trapper from the earlier days of the original settlers. The town dated back about a hundred years or so at that time so we figured the shelter to be somewhere between 50-100 years old.
When I found it the roof was caved in but the door and walls were still standing. I poked around a bit and didn't find much but I would've loved to have spent some time digging a bit deeper and exploring the area with a metal detector etc.
I went back that way a few years ago but the land is now posted so I stayed clear.
I can’t remember exactly but it seems we saw it on an OK road map and we were in Ada at the time. It was certainly worth the trip to see it.
“Actually, he couldn’t even find the right farm.” I know the feeling. When I was a youngster, my father would take me with him to hunt arrowheads in a cornfield of an easily-found farm (spring plowing always turned up a few arrowheads and chipping stones). Apparently the rotation of the earth has displaced that farm from its former location . . . .
lol...
By the way, I love these posts and the Backcountry Notes site. Keep up the great work!
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