Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER ONE
the settler who swung
his long axe in the
clearing to shape the logs for his pioneer home estab-
lished a tradition curiously American: the log cabin.
Even the term calls up mental pictures of open fire-
places, long rifles, and coonskin caps. It has launched
presidential aspirations, and been the setting for a
hundred years of hillbilly stories. But in this age of
temporary housing, it retains its dignity.
Beginnings
The American log house is, by historic definition, a
structure of hewn logs, corner-notched to form one or
more pens, chinked with split boards or thin stones
and mud or mortar, roofed on top with split shakes. It
has one or more fireplaces, stone, brick, or mud-and-
stick chimneys, and is intended as a permanent home.
The log cabin, by contrast, is often of round logs,
and is of less-careful construction, being generally
built as a temporary or occasional residence. Size has
little to do with the basic difference between house
and cabin, although this is the definition basis most
people today would use — our “bigger is better” soci-
ety speaking.
Cabin
is from the Old French term
caban.
In
Pio-
neer America,
Eugene Wilson writes that the earlier
“capanna,” which may be the forerunner of these
names, has Neolithic connections. American cabins
have been mostly one-room structures, evolving from
the “bay” or “rod” dimension — about 16 feet — of
English rural housing.
The 16-foot measure, perhaps originally from the
width required by four oxen, recurs again and again
This cabin restoration with stone and catted chimney is at Montebello,
Virginia, built by the late black-powder gunsmith Rodney Harris.
throughout the growth and spread of log housing.
That's largely cultural; the isolated pioneer as often
measured his house using his three-foot axe handle.
But the fact remains that logs of greater length were
heavy and awkward for the lone settler to handle. His
need was for quick shelter, so a small structure of the
materials available — logs — filled that need best.
