Carpenter Julius Kohls purchased this property in 1882, where he built a one-room log cabin and a combination wood shed and outhouse. In contrast to most of the town’s 1860s-era gold-rush log buildings, Kohls’ cabin does not have hand-notched logs interlaced at the corners. Instead, he nailed the logs to vertical two-by-four-inch pieces of milled lumber. Hand notching and joining the corners together (like Lincoln Logs) creates a tighter, more stable structure, whereas nailing the logs takes less time and labor. The porch and rear addition were likely added in the early 1900s, when dredge mining renewed the economy, bringing jobs and men to the area. Kohls made wagons, wheels, and cabinets, and was a lumber dealer who lived within sight of this cabin in a then-modern wood-frame house on the north side of Wallace Street. This cabin was one of Kohls’ many rental properties; he likely leased it to unmarried men or women. Preservationist Charles Bovey purchased the cabin in the early 1950s and rented it to sheepherder “Little Joe” Shanizie until the early 1970s.
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