The One-Dollar Log Home

Sound impossible? Read on to learn the truth behind the one-dollar log home.

By McCabe Coolidge

	Illustration Courtesy of Barbara Quinn

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 homes. 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 dreamto give abandoned log structures another lifeand 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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