Boy Scouts Getting Help To Save Colonial-Era Cabin

OAKDALE (KDKA) -- A Boy Scout log cabin on a hillside in Oakdale was actually built in North Fayette Township 280 years ago. Boy Scouts of years past moved it to its current location in 1932.

It took those Boy Scouts two years to completely rebuild the cabin. And it wasn't until years later that people realized they'd built it upside down. Water trapped in the wood hastened the decay of a structure where Scouts have held their meetings for eight decades.

Scout Troop 248 packs up mementoes from walls that will soon come down, for another reconstruction.

"There are several log cabins in this area that were here since before the French and Indian War, and are a very viable part of our history of this area," says scoutmaster Tom Taylor. "This cabin is one of them. So we want to keep that history, and keep that in this area."

The "Friends of Killbuck Lodge," named for a colonial era Indian chief, struggled to raise upwards of $100,000 to save the cabin.

Treasurer Bill Leger says when things looked grim, the friends got a break, when the "Barnwood Builders of the DIY Channel made an offer.

"They will disassemble the cabin," he says. "We will move those logs to a staging area, to be paired up with the logs from a donor cabin that we acquired from Westmoreland County. That cabin was built in 1776 by a Revolutionary War hero."

The Barnwood crew will tear it down, then build it back up again - with the help of Troop 248.

"They're going to show us how to make the cuts, and how they link the two logs together," says 15-year-old Boy Scout Noah Magdich. "I think it's called 'dovetails.' They're going to help us do that with axes."

This time around, they plan to build it right side up.

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