Everything has a place in history, but we cannot really trace something to its origins, without many details and findings. Some things remain a mystery but others are almost like open books to us.
Take log cabins, something that people dream of building, or have seen in movies or cartoons, and you have a concept that is very popular, or has been, in the United States. How come log cabins are that popular? Let us take a look back and find the reasons why log cabins were so popular.
When Were They Created?
Everybody likes to romanticize a concept or idea that they love. Log cabins seem like they have been around forever, even though there is concrete evidence pinning them to a specific part of history, Ancient Rome, of course. Some 3500 years BCE, an architect named Vitruvius Pollio noted in his work, Da Architectura, that houses could be built by stacking logs horizontally and adding chips of mud to fill the gaps. Ancient Rome has had ideas about many things, though they might not have created log cabins, even though there were writings about them.
Vikings Galore – The Log Cabins Were Invented
It is unclear whether actual vikings created the log cabins, but there is strong evidence that log cabins were invented in North and East Europe, and some consider Scnadianvia the place of origin. During massive migrations to the United States, immigrants from Finland and Sweden brought their house building knowledge in 1638.
Working with Familiar Wood
When they landed in the US, the Finns and Swedes knew what to do, having a long history of working with wood and hand tools. Log cabins started popping up in Delaware and around the eponymous river. Pretty soon, the Brits, Irish and Scots would copy the work of the Swedes and Finns, and start making log cabins of their own.
The work was pretty simple and even two people could make a cabin in a day. That helped solve the settlement problem, at least initially.
Expanding into the Unknown
The frontier was a difficult place to tame during the settlement of the North American continent. However, given that log cabins were so simple to build, they became the housing of choice when settling the New World. With just one person or two people, a house could be built in less than two days. This led to a growing popularization of the log cabin, not to mention the ties of president Abraham Lincoln to his father’s log cabin.
Expansion and Refinement
Log cabins were simple buildings with a single or maybe two rooms. They were flat and constructed to be an efficient shelter. By the 1850s, there were plenty of towns and cities in the US, which meant that there was time and energy to innovate. Log cabins became more spacious, with multiple rooms and even multiple stories. They became not only spacious, but luxurious, with fireplaces and even peaked roofs.
Log cabins started off as essential and easy to build shelters, and due to their major role in the settling of America, they became a part of American history, still popular to this day. While they used to be simple in the 1700s, today, log cabins are much more sophisticated, offering permanent residence and beauty which reminds one of the days long gone.