Ellettsville plans to refurbish and relocate 1800s Vine Street cabin

ELLETTSVILLE — More than half a century ago, Maurice Endwright had an 1800s cabin in Greene County dismantled and hauled to Ellettsville, where workers rebuilt the structure on West Vine Street.

Through the years, it became a central feature of the town's annual fall festival. A blue-painted sign affixed to the front proclaimed it the "Log Cabin Museum."

Closed most of the year, it transformed into a display site for handmade quilts and historic photographs in late September when festival time rolled around. Bluegrass and gospel groups performed on the back porch. People danced in the grass.

But more recently, the cabin's unstable foundation and the deteriorating planks on the porch have closed the cabin to visitors. There it sits, wildflowers growing askew on each side of the padlocked front door, which has a 2-inch gap between the bottom and the floor.

Faded cotton calico curtains cover the windows, so you can't peek inside to see what remains. There's a good amount of rust on the corrugated tin roof. Chinking between the logs that originally would have been made of clay, sand and mud dug from local ground has been replaced with concrete as mortar.

It seems out of place, located between a more modern two-story home and the Kenny's Tavern parking lot in downtown Ellettsville.

Town marshal and parks board member Jimmie Durnil, and some other folks in Ellettsville, have a new location in mind for the mid-1800s cabin: along a new trail through town, possibly on the former site of Ellettsville's train station on the north side of westbound Ind. 46 near Sale Street.

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Nothing has been set in stone, Durnil said this week as he left the town's history center at the Sale Street building that once served as Ellettsville's town hall. If the plan plays out, and if the town gets a grant to help pay the cost to relocate the cabin, it would move just a half mile to its new home.

"I remember when it was moved over here from Greene County in 1966," Durnil, now 75, recalled. "Maurice Endwright wanted there to be a cabin here in town, and when he got word of one at an old homestead in Greene County, he had it brought to a lot he owned. They rebuilt it right there."

The one-room structure has since been donated to the town.

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Durnil said the cabin was furnished then as it would have been in the 1800s, and second graders from the former Ellettsville Elementary School would visit on field trips to see close-up how people lived in pioneer times.

Durnil said the cabin has a few logs that need to be repaired, and it needs a sturdy foundation and new floor. "It's not perfect, but it's in real good shape," he said. "It would be fantastic if we could get it moved."

Ellettsville Planning Director Denise Line is working on making that happen. She is applying for a $50,000 Community Impact Funding Initiative grant from the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County to pay for the historic cabin relocation.

The cabin would be placed along a planned 2.1-mile trail that will extend from behind the current town hall on the west edge of town. The trail will head east into Ellettsville, crossing a creek and going along an abandoned railway line, before connecting with the existing Heritage Trail that begins downtown.

The town has received a $1 million grant that will be matched by local funds from several sources, Line said, to build the 12-foot-wide paved path.  

"We want the cabin to be part of our trail, with a path that goes to it. At some point, we hope the schools will use it as a field trip, like they used to." 

Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.