By the late 1800's, larger log structures were being built with grand cathedral ceilings, spacious balconies, and heavy-timber roofs. Often, these were used as lodges for vacationing Americans - often from the upper echelons of society - who enjoyed the idea of "roughing it" in a log building. But like the early settler "cabins," these lodges were built almost entirely with hand tools. It wasn't until 1923 that the idea of machined log houses took permanent root and North America's milled log home industry was born.

It began with an enterprising lumber man in Northern Maine named Bruce Ward. He had contracted with local utility companies to provide them poles. Northern White Cedar was selected for its natural resistance to rot and decay. Bruce liked the beauty of the wood so much that he decided to take some of the better poles and construct a small cabin for himself on a lake. It was a rough-hewn affair, not much different from an early settler's home; but it caught the eye of friends and neighbors who saw that a log house had a certain charm, coziness, and warmth that was lacking in many of the frame residences built in that period. They began asking Bruce if he would build cabins for them.

Bruce felt that by producing an improved version of his own cabin, he could create another outlet for cedar logs, increasing demand in the future. Bruce established a small mill in Presque Isle, ME, and started producing log packages. His first milled log houses were erected in his plant, disassembled, and then reassembled on the owner's site - a practice followed today by most of the handcrafted log home companies in North America.

The first milled log homes were, by today's standards, crude. They lacked the stregnth and precise fit achieved by modern joinery techniques and milling machines. But despite the shortcommings, there was a strong regional demand for them.

Bruce studied ways to upgrade his product. Concerned with the cracks that sometimes developed between the log courses, he developed a locking log seam that allowed the logs to set evenly and tightly atop one another. This system would come to be known as the tounge-and-groove method of joinery - an important and fundamental change in milled log design.

When Bruce died in 1943, a group of local investors purchased the Presque Isle plant. They were not satisfied with the system and immediately began work on many of the problems associated with milled log production. For example, they improved upon the tongue-and-groove system that Bruce developed and devised a system of over-lapping, interlocking corners for greater structural stability. Although this corner system has been upgraded in the ensuing years, it is still in use today. Another step taken was precutting logs so limited work had to be done at the building site - a major change that eliminated the need to pre-build a house at the factory. And the new owners developed machines to give another profile to logs. Instead of being round on the inside and outside with a toungue- and-groove system on top and bottom, the new logs were left round on the outside and planed smooth on the interior surface. This formed a "D" shaped timber, which remains the most popular log style of the modern milled log industry.

For the next two decades, there was little log building activity of any kind in North America. But the 1960's changed that.