History : BREA : Log Cabin Sparks Memories of Builder

It isn’t much to look at now. Decay has set in. Part of the roof is gone. Inside, there are piles of junk and debris. For 20 years, the Brea Missionary Baptist Church has used it as a store room.

But it still puts some light in the eyes of Walt Bergman, 87, whenever he sees the old log cabin on West Ash Street which he helped build as a young man in 1921. For Bergman, the rustic structure reminds him of when Brea was a simple, growing town populated by hardy folks who drilled for oil in the hills.

“We had some good times then,” said Bergman, whose family came to Brea when he was 11 years old. “I called everybody in town by their first name.”

Bergman, who worked for a local machine shop from 1939 to 1970, still lives in the city with his wife of 64 years, Evelyn. She is 84.

Although the log cabin has been in the same place for 72 years, few residents knew it existed until recently, when the old buildings blocking it from view were torn down to make way for the downtown redevelopment project.

Now, motorists on Brea Boulevard can easily see the log cabin, and its “discovery” has excited many residents, who have prompted efforts to preserve it, said Brian Saul of the Brea Historical Committee.

“I hope it will be around for a long time and people can go on being amazed by it for many years to come,” Saul said.

The cabin was built in 1921 as a Sunday school classroom for a group of boys from Brea Christian Church, who called themselves the Honor Knights. Bergman, then 15, later became the group’s president.

The cabin was located behind the church, close to the tracks of the Red Car line, a commuter train that took residents to Fullerton or Los Angeles before it shut down, a victim of the automobile age.

Bergman said building the structure was a community effort that lasted about five months. A resident, Dan Dutton, drew up the plans. Amalgamated Oil donated eucalyptus trees, which were cut to size by the Honor Knights, their fathers and other church members. A trucking company hauled the logs to the construction site.

Bergman said the original cabin measured 16 feet by 24 feet, and had four windows, a door, fireplace, bookshelves, electric lights, cement floor, shingle roof, and rustic overhead joists.

Townspeople dedicated the finished structure with a party and a roaring bonfire. A metal can with the names of everyone who built it was buried as a time capsule. It has not been located, Bergman said.

Four years after the cabin was built, it was enlarged to make room for girls who were allowed to join the previously all-male Honor Knights, Bergman said. Telephone poles donated by Southern California Edison Co. were used for logs.

About 20 years ago, the Brea Christian Church sold the property to the Brea Missionary Baptist Church, which turned it into a storeroom. In the years since, Bergman said, he has seldom visited the log cabin or the old downtown.

“I don’t like it here now. All my friends are gone,” he laments.

Most of the old downtown is empty now, Bergman said. Familiar buildings have been torn down, and hundreds of residents and businesses are gone.

The city is planning a massive project that will convert the old downtown into a modern residential-commercial area with outdoor shops and cafes, movie houses, and a new county library.

“It will probably be all right in the end,” Bergman said. “But it will take a long, long time.”