The World's Largest Hollow Log 

History  

A precariously leaning redwood snag became the world's largest hollow log when in 1978 a few miles north of Crescent City, California the last of the Malarkey giants was felled.

Worried that the huge redwood snag would collapse onto a nearby well, the property owner Kenneth Cunningham hired local loggers Lyal Corliss and Kenneth Frank to take down the failing 150 feet tall dead tree.

"It was leaning pretty hard," recalls 80-year-old Corliss as he describes how he made the undercut. "We figured on swinging it to the right into a bed of willows with six to eight inch trunks so it would land soft." The plan worked and amazingly the log "saved out," meaning it landed whole and not in a slab pile.

Once the log was on the ground, the immensity of it's hollowed interior captivated all who came to view the fallen giant – even prompting a horse and rider to pass through with ease. 

In 2001, another local woodsman who had long admired the log purchased it with plans to build a gift shop; however,  the overwhelming task of moving the log presented a colossal dilemma – it was simply too large and heavy to move in one piece.

The challenge of engineering the removal of the Malarkey Log from the Cunningham Homestead fell on the able shoulders of the new owner, Randy Otremba. Himself a skilled logger, he pain-stakingly calculated how to cut the log into four mobile sections able to be reassembled in all it's magnificence for eventual public exhibit.