Shannahan Cabin

Sal is a voice that rides along as you drive Washington's roads: the road ahead, the pass, the stories of the places you pass.

John Shannahan was twenty-four when he built the cabin in 1887, squaring the logs by hand with a broad axe. It stood in the Mount Forest District, close to the King County line, on the river's western bank. He'd left Ontario at fifteen and worked his way west, and by 1883 he'd reached Portland riding the Northern Pacific's very first Pullman. The family added a wood floor as the children came, six of the eight born inside those walls. After it stood empty, a daughter had it hauled by team and wagon to the Tualco Valley in 1936. In 1966 Charles Taylor numbered every log, took it apart, and spent months putting it back together, chinking the gaps with dry moss. [1]