EDINBURGH, Ind. — Back in the midst of the Great Depression, Jim Allen was a widower and working as a logger in northern California. One day he was fishing on the Klamath River when a sudden rain shower erupted.

Allen found shelter in one of the famed California redwoods, in what was called a “goose-pen” tree, one of those forest giants which fire had almost totally hollowed out but somehow had survived.

As he waited out the storm, an idea began to take shape: Maybe he could build a house from one of the giant redwoods. After all, the redwood is slow to decay, is fire-resistant and is distasteful to termites, making it one of the finest and yet economical home-building materials.

In 1939, when Allen was in his sixties, he found the perfect tree near owned by Georgia Pacific Lumber Co. near Eureka. He worked for the company to pay for the tree. It was 14 feet in diameter at the stump cut, 267 feet tall, 1,900 years old and contained 74,000 board feet of lumber – enough to have built six modern bungalows.

The house was the fourth log cut from the base of the tree and is 33 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 feet, 4 inches in height at the larger end. It was cut 65 feet from the stump base after the tree was felled. The log was taken to Eureka, where work began around the clock for four months with drills, chisels, wedges and adzes to remove 11,000 board feet of lumber.

The walls were sanded and rubbed down by hand, then finished with a clear varnish to bring out the grain of the wood. The case work and cabinets are built of redwood material.

From start to finish the exhibit required the work of two men for a little more than one year. Allen lived in the log house for seven years, then started opening the house for tours as more people asked to see it. After his death, his son took the house on the road, first to schools, then fairs and festivals, including two World’s Fairs.

Now Jim Allen’s granddaughter, Jamie Allen, takes the house on tour six months out of the year. Hauling the massive log around the country is a feat in itself. She and a friend use a 1991 Mack Midliner to pull the trailer, getting four miles to the gallon and traveling 54 mph.

Allen said people see it on the interstate, slow down to take a picture or speed up to wait by the roadside with their cameras. Finally, she painted their website address at www.redwoodloghouse.com on the side of the truck to help the curious, and was also happy to add “Find Us on Facebook.”

She grew up with the log house, but never took its grandeur for granted. She described what the hollowed log feels like as one walks in the door: “It’s like the feeling you get when you walk in an old cathedral,” she said. “You know that God made it.”