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The One-Dollar Log Home
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Illustration Courtesy of Barbara Quinn
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By McCabe Coolidge
My life changed in 1970. After electing to dam up the New Hope Creek, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided to create a 10,000-acre recreation area near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They condemned all the farm buildings up and down the low-lying basin, auctioning off houses and barns to the highest bidder; structures that received no bids were let go for a dollar.
My friend, Dick, suggested I check out one of these one-dollar log cabins. On a fine Carolina spring day, we drove in his old GMC pickup truck to the western edge of the proposed lake and down a rutted farm lane amidst wildflowers, abundant weeds, and decrepit fencing. There, riddled with chinking and boasting a rusty red tin roof, wide logs, and a front-leaning porch, stood my future homestead.
Soon I passed a dollar bill to a clerk of the Army Corps of Engineers and signed my name on their contract, promising to move this "structure" within 30 days. What I didn't realize was how much I had just become indentured to the country.
On the following Saturday, Dick and I rounded up some friends. We met at the circa 1900 shack and quickly tore off the tin, then carefully marked each log with a number system (A-1, B-1, etc.) to help us remember how the logs were notched and assembled. We disassembled the cabin like Lincoln Logs and placed the weighty timbers on a flatbed truck.
We took the cabin to a five-acre plot of wild land, sitting high on a ridge above a small creek, that I had purchased a few months earlier. One by one, we lifted the logs off the wagon, spacing them with two-by-fours so they could dry out while we built the foundation piers. Then we put her up, one log at a time.
We raised the roof to a full second storey to create space for two bedrooms. The downstairs was a big room with a fireplace and a woodstove. We added on a small kitchen because the old one had fallen in. For this, Dick found some red cedar that had sat in an old-timer's shed for 50 years, waiting for the next project. He was mighty glad to see it used.
Nine months later and a few days after the spring solstice, my family of four, plus a dog, moved in to this restored log cabin complete with a log well house, a deck with screened-in porch, and a rock fireplace that we had cobbled together from a variety of hearths salvaged out of collapsed or abandoned homesteads. The total cost of this enterprise, excluding the price of the land, was $13,500.
For more than 15 years I lived in the country, miles from the nearest town, at least an hour away from any city. I had a dream—to give abandoned log structures another life—and I pursued it with a passion, finding old tobacco barns and turning them one by one into a pottery studio, a second home, a chicken coop. Then one day in 1993, my life and work took a jarring turn. I moved to Chicago. A few years later, I relocated to Asheville, North Carolina. San Francisco followed in 1999.
Now on my days off, I frequently find myself fleeing the city and driving into the countryside to explore old missions, homesteads, and ancient wooden barns used a century ago for winemaking. I touch their massive beams, and images of pine, oak, and chestnut logs fill my mind.
New housing abounds where I live now, but I'm looking backward, planning my return to some rural area of North Carolina. I think that day will come soon.
When I do return, maybe I'll buy an old Ford pickup truck and drive down a country lane, between rows of pine trees, to a farmhouse that has endured, unchanged, through generations of one family. I'll make some inquiries about a log barn or a piece of land that might be for sale. Then I'll start again, one log at a time.
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