Iconic Logs: Jack London's Cabin

White Fang, The Call of the Wild, To Build a Fire...these are definitive novels of the American and Canadian wilderness that give us all a taste of the wild frontier of yesteryear. Many of Jack London's adventurous texts were written from this very log cabin, built on his mining claim in Dawson City of the Yukon Territory. To preserve the structure and make it more accessible to the public, a team went in and retrieved the cabin in 1969. Since the cabin has interests on both American and Canadian soil, it was broken into two buildings and reconstructed so that each of the twins have half of the original logs. One stands near its original location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. The other, which is pictured, is in Jack London Square in Oakland, California.

Inscribed inside the back of the cabin was carved "Jack London, Miner, Author, Jan. 27, 1898," until the slab was removed in the 40's by Jack MacKenzie, the last man to deliver mail by dogsled. The building could use some restoration and maintenance, but it is in remarkable condition for sitting in the wilderness for 70+ years and outside in California for 30+ more!  

Jack London's Klondike cabin is one of many example of how the log cabin is the home of the adventurous American spirit. From Native American Chief Seattle to author Jack London to President Lincoln to author Laura Ingalls Wilder to Yellowstone's Old Faithful Inn, America's spirit is stacked with logs. Log cabins inspire literature, adventurism, and connection to nature.


 “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
-Jack London in The Bulletin, San Francisco, California, December 2, 1916, part 2, p. 1

“Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

View the entire story of the Jack London cabin here.