City leaders have saved a pioneer-era log cabin from demolition.
The cabin, located about 500 South and 450 East, was slated for destruction to make way for a new parking lot at South Davis Community Hospital.But City Councilman Leslie Foy and the hospital's director have arranged for the cabin to remain on site, just a few feet from where it now sits.
Built by the Willey family in 1854, the structure has been home to some of the city's heartiest families, Foy said.
"People going by probably don't even realize it's there," he said. "It's surrounded by vegetation but is well-preserved."
After the Willeys homesteaded there, the Sedgwick family moved in for a time. Others may have occupied the one-room structure as well, Foy said.
Some years later, the cabin and land was purchased by Grant Neath, who built a house attaching it to the cabin.
Neath, a descendent of Perigrine Sessions, who settled Bountiful, raised his family in the home, which he constructed using three old beams from Perigrine's house.
"(The cabin) served as Mom and Dad's bedroom," said Emma Lou Bardall, Neath's daughter, who lived in the house for 17 years. "It had an old Dutch door as the entrance that Dad left on."
Bardall had hoped the city and hospital could save the entire home, recalling that her father "was quite a character."
Neath collected fossils and rocks from throughout the West and used his collections to build garden walls outside the home. He was also a big game hunter and fisherman, whose trophies attracted numerous visitors, she said.
"There's a lot of sentimental meaning to me there," she said. Neath's family, though, realized they couldn't keep the home so members sold it to the hospital, she said.
If all goes as planned, the cabin part of the structure will be moved from its current location to the corner of what will be the hospital's new parking lot. Workers will landscape around the cabin, and the city or the Bountiful Historical Society will install a sign explaining the history of the cabin, Foy said.