The Log Community Building
In Cowley

During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to help stimulate economic activity. In 1933, the Cowley town leaders sought help from the WPA to build a community hall. It was built from lodge pole logs, cut and hauled from the Pryor Mountains north of Cowley. The WPA furnished a grant to pay laborers wages of thirty cents per hour. No records remain to tell exactly how much was spent or how many local citizens donated time, horses, wagons, tools, or equipment, but it is estimated that nearly a hundred people worked on the project without compensation. The actual money spent was perhaps around $10,000. A group of workers from five to a dozen stayed with the operation from beginning to end.

Adolf Anderson, a man of very little formal education, became both the designer and superintendent. He obviously knew what he was doing. Although the exterior is quite conventional, the interior has almost a cathedral effect with its soaring, open trusswork built of 14 inch logs.

Through the years the building has been used for public meetings, church conferences, annual celebrations, family gatherings, class reunions, dances, political rallies, musicals, dramas, school athletics, and even prize fights.