Whether staying in a tent, an RV, or an old-fashioned cabin, 99% of those who go camping want to head out for another camping trip the following year. However, for a couple renovating their home in Dublin, Ohio, they may never have to worry about finding the perfect spot to camp again.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, Kevin Kemp and Jennifer Alexander were planning on demolishing a home they had bought in order to begin building their dream home. However, as Kemp and his friend, Larry Daniels, began to remove the interior paneling of the home the two discovered something astonishing.
“We pulled off one of the piece of paneling and I said, ‘Larry, that’s a log,'” said Kemp to Columbus Dispatch. “We pulled off another and I said, ‘My god, this is a log cabin.'”
In an interview with Fox News, Kemp described his shock at the discovery. “You’re not ready to see a log cabin inside a modern home and it looks like, just over time, it was forgotten.”
The earliest log cabins in the U.S. were built in the early 1600s along the Brandywine River and Delaware River. Log cabins have long been a staple in American history with up to seven presidents having lived behind their wooden walls. Among the most famous of them was, of course, Abraham Lincoln.
According to Doreen Uhas Sauer, a Columbus historian, the earliest structure to have been built on Alexander and Kemp’s property was an 1856 building belonging to one A. Maties. However, Sauer believes the cabin pre-dates 1856. President of the Dublin Historical Society Tom Holton agreed. According to Holton, the perfectly preserved log cabin was most likely built in 1820 or 1840 at the latest.
Alexander and Kemp have since stopped their renovation of the property and plan to donate the log cabin to the city of Dublin. The couple was not compensated for their donation, but the city’s dismantling of the structure (which they plan to rebuild elsewhere) has certainly reduced construction costs.
“It was startling and was just kind of [a] wonderment to see history just peeled away,” said Holton who described the cabin as a once-in-a-lifetime find, “to see history revealed right before your eyes.”
