A Short History of the Log Cabin
Blue Ridge Log Cabins "Building Your Dreams."
The idea of building the walls of a house by stacking logs horizontally occurred to the Roman architects in the first century, and log cabin home builder Blue Ridge Log Cabins can build one for you that is greatly superior. Following a practice seen in nature to use natural materials that were strong as well as beautiful, the Roman architects were continuing a practice that actually originated thousands of years earlier in the northern regions of Eastern Europe. The cabin built with logs is often considered an American, but the settlers from Germany, Russia and the Scandinavian countries were responsible for building them.
The earliest log homes in the United States were probably built in the early 1600’s by Swedish settlers in present day Delaware. They were accustomed to having an abundance of quality logs, and they were adept at refining the construction methods that made a home secure. Immigrants from Scotland and Ireland had little access to large trees and were unfamiliar with cabin construction methods, but they adopted them quickly. English settlers chose to build home styles that were more familiar to them.America is a nation of immigrants, and your ancestors may have contributed to the establishment of the rustic cabin as the most popular style home. Blue Ridge Log Cabins, an authority in cabin design and construction, carries on the traditions that each nationality brought to the New World. Techniques for joining the logs solidly at the corners were central to the construction of the cabins. With an abundance of natural resources in the New World, the early settlers chose old-growth trees that were tall, straight and without limbs or knots.
Three areas that were of most concern to the builders were the corners, the cracks and vertical stability. By using straight logs with regular dimensions, the builders were able to fill the cracks between the logs with a mixture of wood chips and mud. Securing the corners and making the walls solid were more serious matters, and they developed various ways of notching to hold the logs together vertically and at the corners.
The log cabin is a treasured legacy in America history, and its space of less than 300 square feet is now expanded to luxury dwellings for the descendants of the immigrants who brought the log cabin to America. Call Blue Ridge Log Cabins at 888-563-3275 to get a cabin of your own.