The multi-story Old Faithful Inn takes log cabin technology to its limits It represented our ideal of the frontiersman, independent, fierce-willed and carrying on in the face of adversity. Perhaps it was the hold that the log cabin had on the American psyche. Why log homes came back is not entirely clear. Log Cabin House Plans: A Resurgence Begins With the advent of mass production and steam-powered sawmill's lumber replaced logs as the building material of choice. Cabins tended to be small, appropriate for someone who needed to put most of their energies to clearing land and farming.Īs an area became settled the cabins tended to be either replaced with fancier accommodations or upgraded with siding and plaster so that the logs were no longer apparent. It was certainly not the only style of house built, but it was popular along the frontier. The early settlers had their choice of trees and needed to fell lots of trees in order to plant their crops. The Eastern seaboard had no shortage of trees. The log cabin outlasted the colony and it was picked up by other settlers. This house can be found at the outdoor architecture museum in Helsinki This is only a slight variation on how the early settlers built their cabins. They cover it with leaves and mud, and thus construct the roofs of their towers in a rude form of the 'tortoise' style.” As for the roofs, by cutting away the ends of the crossbeams and making them converge gradually as they lay them across, they bring them up to the top from the four sides in the shape of a pyramid. The interstices, which are left on account of the thickness of the building material, are stopped up with chips and mud. Then upon these they place sticks of timber, one after the other on the four sides, crossing each other at the angles, and so, proceeding with their walls of trees laid perpendicularly above the lowest, they build up high towers. These four trees enclose the space for the dwelling. “Among the Colchians in Pontus, where there are forests in plenty, they lay down entire trees flat on the ground to the right and the left, leaving between them a space to suit the length of the trees, and then place above these another pair of trees, resting on the ends of the former and at right angles with them. In the first chapter of Book II of his ten-volume work, Ten Books on Architecture, he writes the following: The Roman engineer and architect Vitruvius wrote about them in the time of Caesar Augustus. We know that log cabins go back at least to Roman times. Log Cabin House Plans are popular, in part, because of our connection with the history of the log cabin.

Simple log cabin floor plans