If you’ve ever driven U.S. 33 between Fort Wayne and Goshen, you may have noticed a cluster of log cabins tucked alongside a curve just southeast of tiny Benton. They’re easy to pass without much thought, but travelers were meant to stop a century ago. Together, they’re the old Log Cabin Inn, an early tourist court built to take advantage of one of America’s most important roads.
The stretch of U.S. 33 between Fort Wayne and Goshen is much older than the number on its signs suggests. In September 1913, the unassuming connector was part of the original Lincoln Highway! It was an audacious attempt to establish a continuous automobile route all the way from New York City to San Francisco.
The thoroughfare passed through thirteen states1, and it’s hard to overstate what that meant back then: long-distance automobile travel was still an adventure conducted over a patchwork of local roads, many of them unpaved and poorly marked.
The Lincoln Highway gave motorists something very useful: a trail to follow with red, white, and blue markings that rudimentarily displayed where to go. Someone behind the wheel of a Model T, a Buick Six, or, hah. a Silver Ghost could follow the big blue L. At least in theory, the guy behind the wheel could keep going until he reached the other side of the country!
Northern Indiana happened to sit directly in its path, at least until the alignment shifted to a different route in 19282. Still, it didn’t take long for a stream of travelers to follow the Lincoln Highway through communities that had previously served mostly local traffic. That created new opportunities for filling stations, garages, restaurants, cabins, and tourist courts. By the 1920s, businesses had every reason to plant themselves beside the road and wait for motorists to arrive.
The Log Cabin Inn was one of them. Built in 1926 by farmers Edward and Mabel Scott, the first cabin sits behind a semicircular drive above a bluff just above the Elkhart River4. A second, smaller cabin connected to the first by a sidewalk appears to have been built the same year5. A lawn between the driveway and cabin once featured a pair of gas pumps6.
Above and inside its concrete foundation and saddle-notched log walls, the Scotts and their four children largely used the main cabin as their home, but the building also included room for tourists to dine in. It features an enclosed porch once used as a storefront that opens into a dining room, bathroom, and kitchen7. The second cabin just east was home to two bedrooms on the main story and a basement. That’s where the Scotts slept8.
The Scott family built three more frame tourist cabins -this time with vertical half-log siding9– from 1927 to 1937. Two of them, duplexes, still stand today. Unfortunately, Edward passed away in 1943 and Mable Scott sold the Log Cabin Inn to Robert and Genevieve Belik around 194710. After Genevieve’s death in 1972, the camp stopped serving the public for several years until John and Fannie Allison purchased it in 1975. A used car dealer and preacher, Allison operated it as a junk store or antique dealership (take your pick) until about 200911.
I remember Allison’s apocalyptic signs and symbols. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure my dad and I stopped at Allison’s junk store at the old Log Cabin Inn around 2006 to inspect an antique wooden Jon boat up for sale. What a pain in the ass that would have been to restore and maintain! “This is my ministry,” said Allison in a newspaper interview. “This has been my ministry for 20-some years, just talking to people…God has led me to this12.”
Much of Elkhart County’s assessor data is hidden behind a paywall, but what I can access leads me to believe the old Log Cabin Inn is now a private residence13. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019, thanks in large part to an extensively researched nomination prepared by Kurt West Garner. Nearly everything I know about the Log Cabin Inn comes from his work! I don’t know Kurt personally, but we have mutual friends. I don’t get that Kurt does much stumbling given his encylopedic knowledge about this part of Indiana, but maybe he’ll find this post.
At the end of the day, the Log Cabin Inn is a phenomenal reminder of those days when long-distance automobile travel was still something new. After all, the Lincoln Highway didn’t just connect New York to San Francisco; it created a new reason for people like Edward and Mabel Scott to build cabins, serve meals, pump gas, and welcome complete strangers passing through rural Elkhart County on their way to somewhere else.
It’s easy to fly through that curve on U.S. 33 without giving the old cabins a second thought today. The gas pumps are gone, tourists no longer stop for a meal or a bed, and John Allison’s eye-catching signs have disappeared. Nevertheless, the Log Cabin Inn survives beside a road that was carrying coast-to-coast travelers before numbered U.S. highways even existed. For a place built to serve people passing through, it’s a wonder that the Log Cabin Inn remains for the rest of us to see a century after it was built.
Sources Cited
1 Grey, J, (2026, July 10). The 1928 Lincoln Highway in Indiana. Down the Road. Web. Retrieved July 12, 2026.
2 (See footnote 1).
3 (See footnote 1).
4 National Register of Historic Places, Log Cabin Inn Tourist Camp, Benton, Elkhart County, Indiana, National Register # 100004041.
5 (See footnote 4).
6 (See footnote 4).
7 (See footnote 4).
8 (See footnote 4).
9 (See footnote 4).
10 (See footnote 4).
11 Price, T. (1994, October 29). Treasure and junk. The Elkhart Truth. p. 7.
12 (See footnote 11).
13 Parcel 20-16-07-276-003.000-003 (2026). Office of the Assessor. Elkhart County [Goshen]. Web. Retrieved August 19, 2026.
From the looks of the buildings, with modern doors and windows, and metal roofs, it would appear the buildings may still be ‘habitable’. I would think that many folks might enjoy the opportunity to step back in time and have a more ‘primitive’ overnight stay. Of course, running a motel seems to be a formidible job, one the current resident/owners might not be willing to undertake.