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The log cabin was introduced to America by Swedish settlers in the 18th century. It consisted of a dirt floor, four walls, a window, a door, a fireplace, and a sleeping loft above the ceiling below the roof. Traveling into the wilds of Appalachia, settlers couldn't carry a lot of construction equipment, just an axe and perhaps a saw. To get by in the woods, you had to clear trees to expose the black humus soil for planting. What do you do with all the trees?

The settlers build homes from the logs of the trees cleared for the crop fields. They cut the logs in even lengths and notched each log to fit at each corner to form walls. When the walls were built, only then did they carve out a door and a window. Add a stone fireplace, rafters and a framed roof and you almost had a good log cabin. Since the logs were not uniform in straightness, gaps existed in the walls. These gaps were filled with wood chips and sticks and smoothed over with a layer of mud. The roof was either "chinked" in the gaps like the walls, or was covered with turf. All this without the benefit of nails!

Since the time of its usefulness, especially in the 1800s, large populations shifted to the cities and the log cabin became a nostalgic relic of the past. But, since the 1970s, the log cabin type of construction has been brought back--not to the old dirt-floor and loft concept, but to the construction of chalets, cottages, and lodges. Log homes (as they're known today) are prefabricated in a logging yard and shipped to the site. Although they share the notched-log look of the old log cabin, they share little else--electricity air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and insulation. But they still share the fireplace, though now much more spacious and grand--the centerpiece of the modern log home.