Tiny log cabin houses family memories

On Pioneer Day we remember, but Evelyn Henriksen never forgets.

On a given day, you can find her in a small log cabin not much bigger than a walk-in closet in This Is the Place Heritage Park.

"My daddy touched these logs," says Evelyn, running a hand gently along the wall. "I loved my daddy so much."

Evelyn, who is 83 going on 53, with a sparkle in her eye and a 100-watt smile, is a volunteer host at the park, but she's more than that. Her father, Phillip Pay, was born inside these walls, the seventh of 13 children born to pioneers Richard and Mary Goble Pay.

They built the cabin in 1880 in Leamington (near Nephi).

Years later, Phillip took Evelyn and the other children to visit the cabin. It was their heritage, a part of who they are.

Eventually, time took its toll, and the cabin sagged to the ground and Phillip passed away. The children decided to rebuild the cabin in Heritage Park. They went to great lengths to reconstruct it, numbering the logs, then hauling them a hundred miles and reassembling them.

All of the logs are the original, except one, as are the shelves and cupboards built into the wall. Family members contributed furniture and decorations; anything that wasn't authentic to that era was rejected, and a search was undertaken to find something genuine, right down to the square nails in the wall and the rope "springs" for the bed.

It's difficult to explain such an effort expended on a house no one will ever live in again. You either get this need to connect with the past and the importance of it to family, or you don't. It's the kind of thing that sends thousands of Mormon youths from air-conditioned homes to the hot, dusty plains of Wyoming to push handcarts for three days each summer. It's the kind of thing that sends millions to genealogy libraries.

Evelyn gets it. So did the 400 extended family members who turned up for the cabin's dedication, including LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley, whose late wife, Marjorie, was Evelyn's older sister.

"Even the logs bring back memories of my father," she says.

"It makes me remember all the things he taught me."

It's a quiet morning. A wasp floats lazily through the cabin, riding the breeze. Beyond the open door, the Salt Lake Valley is visible in the distance over the yellow fields shimmering in the heat. Sitting here, you can feel time slow down. You can feel the past. It stares at you from the black and white photos on the wall of ancestors long gone.

The day before the ceremony that would officially transfer ownership of the cabin to the park, Evelyn and her siblings gathered here and let the memories settle on them. "It feels like Daddy," someone said. "Wouldn't he be pleased?"

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