Log cabin architecture has a variety of versions throughout Santa Cruz County. It is the most expressive of the forest setting, drawing as it does from natural materials out of the landscape.

The log cabin is thought to date back to 3500 B.C. in Northern Europe. In 100 B.C., the Roman architect Vivitrius wrote of a building with logs stacked horizontally, filling gaps with mud and chips. Log construction became popular with timber cultures, like Scandinavia, Scotland, France, Germany and Russia. In 1640, Scandinavian settlers brought the first log cabin architecture in America to the Delaware Valley.

Palisadal Cabins

The Spanish introduced the earliest log cabins in California. The “Palisadal Cabins” were composed of vertical split logs rammed in the earth, and covered with a thatched roof. Easy to build, they became the temporary structures for the early missions and were more common than adobe buildings in the Villa de Branciforte (East Santa Cruz). But compared with traditional cabins, the Spanish Palisadal cabin was flimsy and drafty, more suited to tropical climates.

The first non-Spanish settlers to Spanish Santa Cruz began arriving in the 1820s, mostly Scottish, Irish, English and French. Some jumped ship from trading vessels and either married into local ranch families, or became mountain men as trappers, lumbermen and distillers. Zayante lumbermen established the first water-powered sawmill in the mountains in 1841, called “a wild and roaring camp,” where they built themselves snug cabins or communal bunk-houses. In the rugged wilderness, the log cabin was the best way to utilize on-site building materials, such as logs, river stone, rubblestone, and mud or clay for filling gaps. The standard Lincoln Log cabin needed no nails, using gravity and settling to sink the logs into their corner notches. The ladder-like corner projections are called “crockets.” Split the log to get twice the lumber out of a tree, with the horizontal split log cabin noted for flat interior walls.

It only took two ax men a couple of days to construct a small “eight log” (eight-foot-high) cabin. The gable roof required wide overhanging “California Eves,” to prevent the water from running down the exterior walls and causing dry rot. A cabin 10 to 12 logs high could include a loft, or second floor. If the second floor overhung the first floor, it was called garrison style, drawn from an Elizabethan tradition. Log forts preferred “block house” construction, where the logs are squared to eliminate spaces in between, with no crockets sticking out from a box corner.

A hollow redwood may be the perfect single-log cabin. In 1846 General John C. Fremont traversed what is now Henry Cowell Big Trees Grove on his “geological expedition.” A hollow Fremont Tree in the grove was later promoted as where Fremont spent the night. However, there is greater evidence the tree was occupied one winter by a family with two guests. A hole in the trunk shows where the stove pipe emerged, plus evidence of a window. And at the time, 30 men could crowd into the tree, standing. But as the tree is a living thing, it is constantly growing, and healing closed the wounds of its fire-scarred hollow.

Mountain Charlie Cabin

One of the earliest residents of the Summit was Mountain Charlie McKiernan, who built his log cabin near today’s Redwood Estates in 1851. He raised sheep and cattle, but they attracted wild animals, especially grizzly bears. Charlie became skilled at bear killing. Then in 1854, he confronted a grizzly protecting her cubs, and the bear bit off 4 inches of skull over Charlie’s left eye and nose. A plate was made from a Mexican silver coin but was removed later due to complications. While Charlie wore his broad-brimmed hat low over his forehead to cover his disfigurement, he lived another 38 years and had seven children.

River Street Cabin

At the turn of the century, Edward Leedham established the Leedham Bulb Co. on River Street (now Gateway Plaza Shopping Center). He built a log cabin fronting the road for a sales office, which became a well-known landmark at the entrance to town. Years later, the cabin housed the popular woodshop of John Sinkinson’s Redwood Novelty Co., furnishing handmade souvenirs to gift shops across the state.

Big Basin

When Big Basin was established as the first Redwood State Park in 1902, it began building a series of log structures that blended so well with the directive to preserve the park in a state of nature. These included a log entry gate, the Redwood Inn (later Big Basin Inn), a restaurant, general store, barber shop, clubhouse, photo studio, post office and rental cabins. In 1936, the Civilian Conservation Corps built the park’s amphitheater and park headquarters. For years the park headquarters was considered the California State Park system’s best-preserved example of Civilian Conservation Corps construction. In August 2020, the CZU Lightning Complex fires destroyed all the historic park buildings.

Meanwhile, cabin architecture proliferated throughout the mountains as tourist cabins and summer retreats. At the turn of the century, California fully embraced the idea of “outdoor living.”

As a result, some cabins had larger porches than their interiors. These would include a front visiting porch, a side dining porch and a back sleeping porch. Because log cabins are an intensely hand-crafted architecture, in the 1920s, kit cabins became popular, with exterior logs milled to a proper profile, for quick assembly.

Redwood Rest

Some cabins seemed suspended in the treetops, built below the level of the road, and entered across an elevated walkway into an upper floor. Then there were the Boulder Creek apartments called “Redwood Rest.” It was built out of a living ring of redwoods, enclosed into rooms with windows and an exterior staircase. To blend with the bark, they used the bark board, often discarded by mills.

Babbling Brook Inn

Where Laurel Street climbs Mission Hill, there was an abandoned mill wheel from the old Kirby Tannery on Laurel Creek. Vaudevillian Maybelle Place saw the drama in such a picturesque setting and built her rambling log cabin overhanging the reanimated wheel. It is today called “Babbling Brook Inn.” While in the midst of the city, it has the ambiance of a mountain forest. The ironwork interiors were by the famed “Otar the Lampmaker” (Johnny Otar). Built as a Garden Folly stage set, it became a real stage set when used in the filming of the 1911 Joaquin Miller story “The Danites.”

Brookdale Lodge

An old log cabin lumber company office was turned into the Brookdale Lodge in 1903. The lobby exhibits French “Piece en Piece” construction, using a log framework into which logs are stacked. Then in 1922, when Clear Creek abandoned its riverbed, new owner Dr. F.K. Camp tried to imagine a natural setting that would keep the creek in its bed. So he built a terraced riverbank, and a log atrium with skylights over the creek, enclosing ferns, vines and mountain greenery. This became Brookdale Lodge, the Dining Room with the River Running Through It. Likewise, he engaged Otar the Lampmaker for ironwork.

Rowardennan

Hotels that took the log cabin aesthetic to a larger and larger scale were evolving the Grand Lodge style. Around 1893, Thomas Bell established the 300-acre Rowardennan Redwood Park just south of Ben Lomond. “Row-ar-DEN-nan” is Scottish for an enchanted forest that drives cares away. Besides its large log cabin hotel, additional buildings included a dining hall, ballroom, bowling alley and library. It also had its own 1897 hydroelectric dam on the river, a boating pond and tennis courts. The old fountain that once sat in front of the hotel is all that remains.