Restored pioneer cabin preserves history in Pleasant View
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- Pleasant View resident Mike Humphreys, with the help of several volunteers, disassembled the 140-year-old Hickenlooper/McLane log cabin and reconstructed it in Wadman Nature Park. After a four-year process, the cabin was dedicated in June 2019.
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- Several Eagle Scout candidates assisted Mike Humphreys in the reconstruction of the 140-year-old Hickenlooper/McLane log cabin. Kamron Folkman helped build trusses for the roof, and later Garrett Redd worked to shingle it.
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- Pleasant View resident Brandon Park, who had constructed his own log cabin home, lent his knowledge to Mike Humphreys as he reconstructed the 140-year-old Hickenlooper/McLane cabin in Wadman Nature Park.
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- Kurt and Holly Fuller of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers took detailed notes of how the Hickenlooper/McLane log cabin in Pleasant View was constructed, to aid in its disassembly and reconstruction.
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- A group led by Eagle Scout candidate Ethan Youngberg cleaned up the disassembled logs of the Hicklooper/McLane cabin for eventual reconstruction of the 140-year-old structure.
Residents of Pleasant View no longer need to travel 45 minutes to Temple Square in Salt Lake City to see pioneer monuments. An original pioneer home has been restored and is open to the public at the north edge of town.
The cabin, built in 1880 by William Hickenlooper, now sits in Wadman Nature Park next to the Pleasant View Fire Station. A wooden boardwalk weaves through the tree-filled park, and there is a bowery for people to sit next to the cabin.
This four-year restoration project began with Mike Humphreys, a local resident, excavation contractor and developer, who was hired in 2015 to clear some land for a new subdivision.
Humphreys’ family has lived in Pleasant View for generations near the parcel that held the old Hickenlooper house, which had been expanded over the years.
“I always knew the old pioneer home had been there,” Humphreys said, and it appeared another home had been built on top of the old log cabin.
Discovering history
As he tore the newer house off the cabin, he found the interior walls of the cabin had leftover char marks from a fire as well as other evidence of the home’s previous lives.
He felt this cabin had a historical significance. The 140-year-old logs had survived a fire and had been passed down through generations.
That recognition, said Steve Gibson, a member of Pleasant View’s city council, was the seed of preservation.
“It all started with Mike Humphreys,” Gibson said. “He could have bulldozed it, but he wanted to find a way to save it.”
Hickenlooper arrived in Salt Lake City in 1847 after trekking across the country from Pennsylvania. By 1880, Hickenlooper and his wife, Ann Ham, wanted a quieter place than the bustling Salt Lake City, and Ogden was closer to their extended family, so they built their one-room cabin in Pleasant View.
Ham and her three sons lived in the cabin for almost two years before they moved into a larger adobe home her sons built on the same property. After Ham and her sons moved out, Ham’s daughter and son-in-law, Rachel and Duncan McLane, moved in with their family.
The McLanes raised nine children, four boys and five girls. After Rachel and Duncan’s passing, their youngest son, Hugh, inherited the cabin and property. Throughout the years, rooms were built around the original one-room cabin, and electrical wires and plumbing were added to accommodate larger families.
The cabin stayed in the Hickenlooper and McLane families for 132 years and had relatives living in it until 2012. The property was sold to the Jensens, cousins of the Hickenloopers, who planned to develop the land for new homes. They hired Humphreys to clear the land.
A community project
The cabin was in a bad enough condition that Humphreys was not able to just move the cabin intact. He knew it needed to be disassembled, so he got in contact with Kurt and Holly Fuller of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. The Fullers came and numbered the logs, took pictures and created diagrams of the cabin before it was dismantled.
Humphreys planned to put the cabin back together himself on his property. He loaded the logs into the back of his dump truck and parked it on his land, which was just down the road from the original property.
The logs were stored in the dump truck for about a year. Realizing how much work it would be to restore this cabin by himself, he reached out to his friend Jerry Burns.
Burns was a member of the Pleasant View City Council and involved with the Boy Scouts. He was able to recruit seven young men who were looking for a project to get their Eagle Scout award to help.
To begin the project, the logs had to be cleaned off. Ethan Youngberg, one of the Scouts, put together a group to pull out the old nails, scrape the charred logs and pressure wash the paint off.
The next step was to find a location with better public access. Burns and Humphreys worked with Toby Mileski, Pleasant View’s mayor at the time. Mileski recommended the cabin be built at Wadman Nature Park. He thought the cabin would look better in a nature park than a normal groomed city park.
Burns, Humphreys, Gibson and Mileski spent a Saturday morning clearing trees at the nature park for the site and then poured a cement foundation. Dylan Bohling, the second young man working on his Eagle Scout project, took on this part of the restoration with the help of an uncle in the cement business. The cement pad was the one of only parts of the restoration process the city helped pay for, Mileski said.
With the land cleared and the foundation poured, it was time to reassemble the logs. This was the task of Micah Brown for his Eagle Scout project.
Technical help needed
Brown and his family hit a problem: During the cleaning of the logs, the pressure washer took off some of the numberings, making it impossible to know which logs went where. Brandon Park came to help with the construction of the logs.
Park, a Pleasant View resident, had built his own log cabin home, so his expertise was helpful, Burns said.
“It was trial and error finding the correct placement of the logs,” Park said. The pictures that the Daughters of Utah Pioneers had taken of the cabin before it was disassembled were the key to the puzzle.
The process of reconstructing the pioneer cabin was different from the process of building a new log cabin, he said. In the 1800s, people had to use any large log they could find. They would cut it down with a saw or an ax and use it even if it was not straight. Each log would have a specific spot where it needed to fit in the home. Today, machines carve out straight logs that can be placed almost anywhere in the home, Park said.
Since the logs of the pioneer home did not fit perfectly together, they had to find a way to fill in the gaps. Burns researched what the pioneers may have done so they could make the cabin as authentic as possible. Burns along with the help of 50-plus members of the Pleasant View Ninth Ward from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mixed a pioneer version of chinking, a cement-like material made of sand or clay, to fill the gaps.
After the chinking had dried, Jonah Thompson, an Eagle Scout candidate, cleaned the logs again and applied linseed oil to preserve the wood.
The cabin still needed a roof, so Eagle Scout candidate Kamron Folkman took on the project with the help of Matt Redd, a roofing contractor. They used old barn wood that had been donated to create the trusses. After the trusses were set, Redd then helped his son Garrett, who was working on his Eagle Scout project, to apply the shingles.
After the construction process of the cabin was complete, Theron Peterson, an Eagle Scout candidate, helped with the landscaping and sod installation.
Restoration projects like this pioneer cabin usually cost thousands of dollars, but this project cost the city little, said Mileski. He said this project happened because of Burns, Humphreys and the many volunteers they brought in.
Burns said, “It was all the good people of Pleasant View and the Scouts that worked together to make this project possible.”
History now on display
The Hickenlooper/McLane cabin was dedicated June 19, 2019. The cabin has a plaque explaining the history of the cabin and is open to the public.
Connor Stephens, a Pleasant View resident, loves to show his family the pioneer cabin and talk about its heritage.
“It is important to have restoration projects like this cabin because we can learn of the strength of our ancestors, and it will inspire us to do hard things,” said Stephens.
Since the dedication of the cabin, Burns founded the Pleasant View Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the history of Pleasant View. The cabin was also recognized and won an award from the Utah Heritage Foundation.
There are a couple more cabins in Pleasant View, but the owners have not wanted to sell them yet, Burns said. He figured the next best way to preserve the history of those cabins is to share their stories on the foundation’s website.
To learn more about the Hickenlooper/McLane cabin or about the history of Pleasant View, visit pvheritagefoundation.org. There are stories, videos and a contact page with an email and phone number.