Move of cabin to Pioneer Park will put CCA Christensen legacy on public display

EPHRAIM—How do you move a cabin—specifically, a pioneer cabin that’s at least 150 years old?

That was the challenge the Fort Ephraim Camp of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers (DUP), Ephraim City, the Ephraim Public Works Department, the Ephraim Power Department, C.O. Building Systems and LDS service missionaries tackled over six months between about June 2025 and Jan. 6 of this year.

The multi-step effort was completed on Tuesday, Jan. 6 when a flatbed truck carrying the cabin drove from Main Street to Pioneer Park, and, after some tense moments, set down the structure on treated-wood footings screwed to a concrete slab. In the rain no less.

Carl Christin Anton (CCA) Christensen was one of Sanpete County’s most notable pioneers. He was born in Denmark in 1831, studied for about five years at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen and converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1850.

In 1857, he sailed to America and then pulled a handcart across the plains to Utah. He ended up in Manassa, a settlement 5 miles west of Ephraim at about the latitude of 100 North today. He married two wives, one in 1857 and one in 1868.

He became possibly the most famous Mormon pioneer artist. Among about 75 paintings, he painted murals in the St. George and Ephraim temples; painted a widely published work titled “Handcart Pioneers;” and most significantly, created his “Mormon Panorama” consisting of 23 paintings depicting church history from the first vision in 1820 to the arrival of the pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.

Explaining his work, he once said, “The old generation who bore the burdens of the day in the persecutions in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois will no longer be with us a few years hence. History will preserve much, but art alone can make the narrative of the suffering of the Saints comprehensible for posterity.”

In 1997, his cabin in Manassa was moved to the Main Street complex containing the Co-op, Bishop’s Storehouse and Relief Society Granary. Various occupants of the Relief Society Granary used the cabin for art exhibits, art classes and meetings.

Most of CCA Christensen’s paintings ended up at the BYU Museum of Art. The museum made prints of many of the paintings and gave them to Christensen descendants, including great-grandchildren living in Manti and Ephraim.

A few years ago, Karl Christensen of Ephraim, one of CCA’s great-grandchildren, and his wife, Carolyn, hosted a gathering of descendants in their home to find out which descendants had which prints and to discuss preserving the prints.

Sarah Thomas, director of what is now the Ephraim Heritage Museum (earlier known as the Hansen House) and a leader in the local DUP, attended the gathering. That’s where Karl Christensen told her, “I would really like to see the cabin over at Pioneer Park.”

In June 2025, Granary Arts, which used the Relief Society Granary and Christensen cabin from 2013 to 2025, notified the city that it was moving out of the buildings. The departure happened just as Ephraim was setting up a board to oversee the city’s historic properties, with Michael Thompson, who is also the city librarian, as director.

For Sarah Thomas, the time seemed right to act on Karl Christensen’s suggestion. She talked to Thompson, who pulled together a meeting of Katie Witt, the city manager; Councilwoman Margie Anderson, the city council liaison with the history board; Craig Oberg of C.O. Building Systems; and several CCA Christensen descendants.

Thomas told the gathering, “We can make this move happen, but we (the DUP) can’t do it by ourselves.”

Thomas got the support she was looking for. “Ephraim City and C.O. Buildings really, really need to be thanked for stepping up and making this happen,” she says.

Thomas and other DUP volunteers identified a spot behind (south of) the Ephraim Heritage Museum for placement of the cabin. Besides being in the pathway visitors could be expected to walk as they visited Pioneer Park, the site had access to electricity.

The Ephraim Public Works staff showed up to prepare the site. The workers noticed a hole, a perfect circle, with rocks carefully placed around the sides. At first, they thought it was a pioneer well. It turned out to be a cesspool, a pioneer version of a septic tank.

The next steps were filling the cesspool with concrete, moving sprinklers, and pouring a concrete slab to the exact dimensions of the base of the cabin.

Young LDS service missionaries have been helping at Pioneer Park several years. Val Hill, a retired cabinet maker and contractor, and president of the South Sanpete Chapter of the Sons of the Utah Pioneers, marshalled some of the missionaries to make precise measurements of the cabin (which appears to be about 50 feet square), including measuring the width of the walls. “They gave those measurements to the city,” Thomas says, “and the Public Works Department poured the cement.”

The fragile logs at the base of the cabin couldn’t be set directly on the concrete. So, using treated wood, Hill built footings a few inches high, and screwed the wood into the concrete.

Meanwhile, the Ephraim Power Department disconnected power lines into the cabin next to the Relief Society Granary to prepare it to be moved.

All that was the easy part. The big challenge was gingerly lifting the cabin with a crane onto a flatbed truck, driving it through a couple of blocks through city streets, lifting it off the truck, and setting it down on the concrete slab and treated wood footings without doing any significant damage.

Craig Oberg, owner of C.O. Buildings, whose wife, Diane, is a great-great-granddaughter of CCA Christensen, volunteered to direct the move. He even brought in a crane from out of state.

“It was very complex,” Thomas says. At the site on Main Street, the C.O. Buildings crew connected cables to the bottom of the cabin, put hay bales between the cables and sides of the cabin to steady the structure, then attached the tops of the cables to the crane hook. Then they lifted the cabin onto a flatbed truck. That took one day.

The next day, the truck drove north on Main Street, passed under the traffic light at 100 North, and then drove west on 100 North to the entrance to the Pioneer Park parking lot.

Inside the park, the crane got in just the right position to lower the building onto the wood footings. But despite insertion of hay bales, when the crane operator started lowering the cabin, it started swinging precariously in the air. Workers set the structure back down on the flatbed, cut slits in the roof, connected cables to the roof and slowly lowered the building onto the footings. That took another day.

“The workers were holding levels” at every point in the process, Plummer, the DUP volunteer says. Thomas adds, “They had to make sure it was plumb after it was set down.”

With the cabin in place, Thomas and other volunteers are looking at a whole new do-list. The logs on the outside of the cabin need to be sprayed with linseed oil to protect the wood. The chinking between logs needs to be removed and the whole building “rechinked.”

Electricity needs to be run to the cabin. More concrete needs to be poured for sidewalks and porches. And additional landscaping and graveling is needed between the sidewalks, and preexisting landscaping.

Since January, Hill, with the service missionaries, has been renovating the interior. They are removing sheet rock on the walls and replacing it with wood paneling. The paneling will be painted dark brown, similar to the color on the interior of the roof. (The cabin does not have a ceiling).

While the DUP hasn’t decided on the format, Thomas says the group plans a display or multiple displays inside the cabin telling about CCA’s life and art.

The displays are expected to include at least some prints from the Mormon Panorama. Christensen descendants have donated about 15 prints from the BYU museum. Some of those may also be displayed.

Thomas is also considering displaying prints of photographs by George Edward Anderson, a famous pioneer photographer who documented life in central and southern Utah towns in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The DUP is hoping to open the Ephraim Heritage Museum (“Hansen House”), by the first Monday in April. “We’re trying to get ready for a very busy summer of field trips and youth groups,” Thomas said, not to mention many visitors anticipated during the Ephraim Temple open house.