More than 2,000 people have signed a petition to save an old sod-roofed cabin in Trout Creek.
The Change.org petition includes 1,177 signatures by Summerland residents, representing roughly 10 per cent of the community’s population, said Dorothy Inglis, one of the people advocating to save the cabin on Landry Crescent. Others signing the petition are from around the world.
The cabin is in an orchard that is being replanted.
Inglis, an administrator with the Summerland Hometown Memories Facebook group and a member of the Okanagan Historical Society, said the cabin, built between 1886 and 1888, is the oldest building in Summerland and one of the oldest buildings in the Okanagan Valley.
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The cabin has been the home to Alberta’s first lieutenant-governor, Lt. Gov. George H.V. Bulyea, Claude Evans and Jacques Landry, Herbert Dunham, pioneer orchardist and the James Gartrell family, Summerland’s longest resident pioneer family.
“Some prominent people have had it as their home,” Inglis said.
Today, some of the timbers of the cabin have rotted and as a result, preserving the building would be a complex task.
On Nov. 25, members of the Okanagan Historical Society asked council for help in protecting the building.
George Downton of the historical society asked that council locate and secure a municipal property where the cabin can be placed. He also asked for funding to protect this structure until further preservation is possible.
Council has received the information.
Inglis said the cabin may have to be dismantled log by log and the unusable logs then replaced.
There has been talk of dismantling the cabin and reconstructing it elsewhere, either at the Kettle Valley Steam Railway site or at another location in the community.
Inglis said Trout Creek residents would like to have it remain in the area, since it has long been a landmark in Trout Creek.
She added that grant funding may be available to take on the restoration and moving of the building.
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