♪♪ ♪♪ Victoria Cote: So this is the oldest building west of the Mississippi River.

It was originally built prior to 1828 by a French fur trader, Arriandeaux, which is why we call it the Arriandeaux Log Cabin.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: At that time you had a lot of French fur traders come in the area with the fur trade, but we also had lead mining in the area.

This land was very rich with lead ore. You had the gold rush in California and here you had the lead rush.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: It would have just been local wood from the area.

You can see that they've just been layered one on top of the other and then filled in with a type of mortar.

This particular log cabin, the style of it is called a dog trot.

And it's very unusual for this area.

You really don't find it north of Missouri.

And the reason for that is because it is designed specifically for hot climates.

You have the dog trot, or the breezeway, in the middle and that is designed to let that breeze come in and get rid of all that hot air.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: We'll just open the door so you can head on inside and see what it's like.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: We believe that the reason why this building was built, especially the way it was, was because half of it was permanent living residence for Arriandeaux, and the other would have been his business where he did all of his trade from.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: We have two fireplaces, one on either end.

We feel as if one might be original, but there's no way to specifically say for sure.

And the reason why we tend to think that they are not original is because they have been put into the walls permanently, where traditionally a fireplace for a log cabin would have been removable in case if it went up in flames you could just go outside and actually pull it away from the cabin.

So therefore the whole cabin wouldn't go up in flames.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: This was originally located in what is now downtown Dubuque, right close to where our current cathedral is, so Locust and 2nd Street.

When this log cabin was originally discovered it had red cladding on it, they were taking it off, and they were like, oh my gosh there's a log cabin here, we need to save this, it's part of our history.

So what they did was they originally moved it up to Eagle Point Park and it became a place where you could have a picnic, you could rent it out for a weekend camping trip.

And then when Mathias Ham Historic Site opened up as a museum, the city said, oh this would be a great place for that cabin to move because it is a part of our history and it would be protected here and this is where visitors could really come and see and for us to interpret what life was here in Iowa back before it became open for settlement.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: So, when they moved this log cabin from Eagle Point Park to this location, they actually took it apart and they numbered each log, so just like your Lincoln Log set they rebuilt it here piece by piece.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: Dubuque is the oldest city here in Iowa.

It is pretty fast how cities are built.

A lot of times you think it takes 50 to 80 years for a city to truly be built.

Iowa actually doubled in population within like 10 years when it became a territory.

And then every two years it was doubling.

That's how fast Iowa grew.

♪♪ Victoria Cote: This was all untamed land where people saw an opportunity to make money and to expand.

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