Bear Bend

The cabin’s construction is a unique period piece, described as being a story-and-a-half double pen log cabin with four rooms in two segments connected by a breezeway, thereby making it one of the oldest and most intact cabins of its time and type still extant.

The cabin was originally located in Montgomery County near the Walker County line in a U-shaped bend in Atkins Creek – an area now under Lake Conroe. In 1974 Houston-area preservationists Carroll and Mae Tharp purchased the cabin and moved it six miles south of the original site. For the move the Tharps dismantled the cabin piece-by-piece, numbering each section for accurate restoration [1].

In a 2010 Huntsville Item article, Museum director Patrick Nolan explained how the cabin received its name: “We found a quote in a book that said there was a bend in [Atkins] creek near the cabin and they would drive bears into that bend.” [3]

The cabin’s new site, dubbed Fernland, eventually became home to five structures collected by Tharps. Restoration of Bear Bend at this site took place between 1987 and 1991.

In 2002, the original Fernland property – and the five structures – was donated to SHSU [1].

Portions of the 2008 film The Man Who Came Back were shot at the cabin [2].

Due to the remote location of the five buildings, and the eventual determination that providing an infrastructure at the site would be too costly, the decision was made to relocate the buildings [4]. Bear Bend would move to Huntsville while the other four buildings were moved to the city of Montgomery's Fernland Historical Park.

In October 2010 the cabin was again dismantled and moved, this time to the Sam Houston Memorial Museum Complex where it was rebuilt and restored. A re-dedication ceremony was held the following March.