The 139-year-old cabin at the Mower County Fairgrounds has become a political hot potato.

Monday, October 23, 2000

The 139-year-old cabin at the Mower County Fairgrounds has become a political hot potato.

On Thursday, County Coordinator Craig Oscarson said the members of the Mower County Board of Commissioners were content to leave the decision with the Mower County Historical Society and washed his hands of the old building that has caused such a fuss over the past week and a half.

On Saturday, members of the historical society board said they weren’t willing to take the heat for the cabin’s demise. Although the board did adopt a motion supporting its actions over the past few years regarding the cabin and the construction of a replica to replace it, they wanted it made clear that they had little other choice. All the buildings at the fairgrounds are officially owned by the county – it is the artifacts inside the buildings that are the property of the historical society.

"As it is, we hardly have the money to pay our staff, and there are many other things – the caboose, the school house, the dome – that need to be repaired," board Vice President Jim Lange said. "If the county or the public could come up with the money to repair that cabin, I’d change my vote in a second. I’d love to see that old cabin moved right next to the new one."

The cabin that is the source of such a fuss was built by the Ole Severson family in Frankford Township east of Grand Meadow in 1861. It was donated by the family and moved to the fairgrounds in 1964.

Earlier this month the Fair Board requested permission to demolish the cabin to make way for bigger and better bathrooms and the Mower County Historical Society Board voted 6-2 to allow them to tear down the cabin. An article in the Austin Daily Herald about the soon-to-be demolished cabin sparked a wave of protest.

However, the feelings of outrage that came out in letters and phone calls to the newspaper and the office of the historical society failed to translate to bodies at the society’s Saturday meeting in Elkton. Only two people – Anne Waldman and Mike Adams – came to the board meeting to address the fate of the cabin.

Adams told the story of another log cabin in Skokie, Ill., that he had been a part of restoring, and the public outcry that resulted in a half-million dollars being raised for the restoration of the cabin and the city’s firehouse.

While he didn’t say they had to save the cabin, he did point out to the board that it needed to explain how it had arrived at the decision not to repair the cabin and explain that to the larger population.

Waldman wanted to know whether the board could let the people take their case to the county board.

"You need to realize why there’s such an outcry," Waldman said. "Austin is changing so fast – people want to hold on to some of its past. Why not let the people themselves who are crying so loudly appeal to the county board. See how far they can get with the board."

Mike Wollschlager made the motion, which passed unanimously, to "affirm previous board actions pertaining to the cabin" with the understanding that the cabin belongs to the county and the historical society would respect the final wishes of the county board in the matter of the cabin’s future.

Lange voiced his frustration with the county board during and after the meeting, explaining that the county board had kept a portion of the more than $200,000 in insurance money for hail damage to the buildings at the fairgrounds and told the historical society that they weren’t going to fix any of the buildings right now.

"We don’t have the money to fix them ourselves," he said. "The county owns those buildings but they aren’t willing to put any money into maintaining them properly."