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Bryan and Heather Leonard with a  restored log cabin and agricultural bunkhouse they operate as Airbnbs.

Bryan and Heather Leonard inside Audrey's Abode, the restored log cabin they operate as an Airbnb.

Bryan Leonard and the popular outdoor bathtub at Bunkhouse 74.

Heather and Bryan Leonard on the porch of Audrey's Above, a restored log cabin they operate as an Airbnb.

Bryan Leonard had a dream.

“Our family was growing and we hoped to find some land and build a house,” Leonard said, “and I always thought it would be cool to find one of these old log cabins to use for a place for visitors to stay.”

That dream has blossomed into an Airbnb sensation as Bryan, his wife, Heather, and their six children welcome visitors from around the world every week at a restored log cabin and a separate, restored historic agricultural bunkhouse on their rural Jacksonville property.  

“We have long lost track of the number of countries that we’ve had people from, all over Europe, South Africa, Australia, China,” Bryan Leonard said. “The structures are conveniently located, they are unique, they have a story, and they are quaint and fun.”

The tale of how two rural historic buildings were moved from their original locations and are now hosting visitors is at least as unique as the structures themselves. The story began when Bryan and Heather, who had frequently stayed overnight in several restored log cabins in the Nauvoo area, had a conversation with the man who owned the buildings.  

“Bryan got to know him and they became buddies, and one day the guy called and said ‘hey, there’s a log cabin in Lima’,” Heather Leonard said. “And Bryan was like, ‘I’ve got to go get that cabin'.”

Bryan’s family owned a log cabin in Michigan when he was young and his grandparents lived in a log cabin west of Jacksonville, so the desire to have a log cabin of his own came naturally. He and Heather stopped by the cabin in question on the Adams-Hancock counties border, left a note on the door for the owner, and the owner later called and agreed to let them take the cabin.

Bryan and several church friends spent a Saturday dismantling the late-1800s cabin, loaded it on a trailer, and then moved the pieces to Jacksonville. The trailer was stored for a year at Leonard & Six Plumbing and Heating, a business owned by Bryan’s family, as Bryan and Heather searched for property on which to build their new house and to re-build their historic log cabin.

The couple eventually purchased land just south of Interstate 72 and built their home, and Bryan spent nearly eight years of “just me and Saturdays” restoring the historic log cabin just to the west of their new residence. It was furnished with pieces from his grandparents’ estate.   

“We actually lived in the log cabin for about six months while we were building our house, and then we asked ourselves, ‘what are we going to do with this?’” Bryan said. “So we decided to put it on Airbnb and see what happened. We never dreamed it would be as popular as it has been.”

Bryan used materials from several different structures in the Airbnb log cabin. The ceiling beams came from a barn near Carrollton, some of the siding is from a barn west of town, the floors came from the old Rushville lumber yard barn, an interior door is from the old Cherry House that was torn down in Jacksonville.

Heather said many people seek out Audrey’s Abode, named for Bryan’s grandmother, because of the unique log cabin experience coupled with the modern conveniences of electricity, plumbing and air conditioning.

“Some people want to have the Lincoln experience, to stay in a log cabin and take the kids to see the Lincoln sites,” Heather said. “It’s often like having new neighbors. If they bring kids sometimes our kids will play with them.”

The log cabin Airbnb was so successful that Bryan and Heather began thinking of ways to add a second historic structure. Bryan found a likely candidate where Orleans Road passes over I-72 near Alexander, a farm with several old buildings including “a cute little structure with a chimney off to the side”

The structure was an agricultural bunkhouse from the 1930s or 1940s. Bryan contacted the farm’s owner, Paul Armstrong, and before the phone call was over, Bryan had his second historic building. 

That was the easy part. The hard part was moving the structure, intact, the 18 miles from rural Alexander to the Leonard homestead.  

The same church friends who helped move the log cabin (“so basically he has a lot of favors he owes,” Heather said) assisted Bryan in the summer of 2019 as they lifted the bunkhouse onto a trailer and began the slow, all-day trip to its new home. 

“Fortunately we had about 6 inches to a foot of clearance with all of the wires between Alexander and here. The Illinois Rural Electric Cooperative came out and measured every wire for us,” Bryan said. “They had fun, I think, in the process too. We had to lift one or two wires to get it underneath but we didn’t have to take any down.”

The restored structure is called Bunkhouse 74 because it originally sat at mile marker 74 along the interstate. The Leonards have rented it as an Airbnb since 2020.

“It’s a tiny house and Bryan put a bathtub outside. And people love that bathtub!” Heather said. “It’s very private, but people talk about just sitting in that bathtub for a long time.”

Heather said Audrey’s Abode and Bunkhouse 74 are popular for their pricing as well as their pedigrees.

“We are a family of eight (ages 7 to 19) and we don’t want to overprice anybody. We wanted to have places that we could afford to rent ourselves,” Heather said. “Some people charge pretty large cleaning fees, but we only charge a cleaning fee if you bring a pet. We’re not trying to get rich, because we enjoy it.” 

When he isn’t turning historic structures into Airbnbs, Bryan is the director of marketing and communications at Illinois College. Heather is a registered nurse at Jacksonville Memorial Hospital. The Leonards have paid for all of the work out of pocket on their historic lodging places. And it appears that they aren’t satisfied to just sit back and admire what they have accomplished on their property.

 “I’d love to add a small, restored barn. It would be a rebuild with materials that are fully reclaimed,” Bryan said. “There’s a couple of spots where we have room.”

To which Heather immediately replied, “and where would we put it? And who will clean it?”

“Bryan needs a creative outlet at all times. He’s very project-oriented, he can’t pick up a book and read it, he has to make something,” Heather said. “He has said that he enjoys the process of figuring it out almost more than actually doing it.

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