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The move was uneventful, at least as uneventful as moving 30,000-pound log landmark can be.

With 7,000 inmates sleeping at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, a contentious piece of Dallas County’s past made a dark getaway after 25 months locked up behind the jail.

What’s known as the John Neely Bryan log cabin returned to its home in Founders Plaza about 3:10 Thursday morning. It was forced to leave in March 2005 before a parking garage was built beneath where it sits outside the county records building in Downtown Dallas.

The move was uneventful, at least as uneventful as moving 30,000-pound log landmark can be.

The cabin’s interest to residents and visitors is not in dispute, says Sam Childers, the communications manager for The Old Red Museum of Dallas County History and Culture.

“It’s tourist draw,” Childers said. “There’s hardly a time when it’s on the plaza that you don’t go by and see a group of tourists taking a picture."

What is in dispute, though, is the history behind the cabin. One common assumption is that the cabin was the original home of John Neely Bryan when he became Dallas’ first resident in 1841.

But, Childers and James Pratt, an architect who has been researching the cabin for 25-years, say that long-time tale is a myth.

"For a time there was a marker on the cabin that indicated that it was John Neely Bryan’s cabin,” Childers said. “So, I believe that’s probably where that myth started."

Childers and Pratt insist the cabin was built in the 1930s for display at the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. John Neely Bryan, Jr., they say, did receive visitors in the cabin during that time, which is another possible origin for the belief it was his father’s home.

"The myth just goes on about its origins,” Childers said.

Now that the cabin is back in Founders Plaza, where it has been since the early 1970s, it will again be an attraction. Even with the knowledge of its less-notable past, there was not a serious effort to have it removed from downtown display.

Pratt says the cabin is similar in style to the English cabin that Bryan had, but the pitch of the roof is much steeper than cabins typical of that time and the log work is more intricate than they believe Bryan would have been able to do.

Still, historians say there is some historical significance because of its part in the Texas Centennial. “Hopefully the county will put some sort of signage up there to indicate its origins and maybe change that myth a little bit,” Childers said.

The cabin returned to the still under construction Founders Plaza seven months later than the county had planned. Dan Savage, the county’s assistant administrator for operations, said the construction simply took longer than expected.

Normally the drive from Lew Sterrett to behind the county records building, would be a half mile down Commerce Street with turns on to Main Street, Market Street and then to the cabin’s old home on Elm Street.

The preferred passage would take it through the triple underpass, but the cabin is too tall. So, it was driven down Industrial Boulevard to Woodall Rodgers Freeway, before exiting at Field Street, a turn on to Griffin Street and a turn on Elm. The cabin was home after the 10 minute drive.

Elm Street was shut down while workers from Denton County House Movers spent nearly five hours placing the cabin in its new spot 50 feet to the west of its previous location in the plaza.

The site may be slightly different, but the name is staying the same.

"I think it’s fine to call it the John Neely Bryan cabin,” Childers said. “If you tried to change the name I don’t think you’d get away with that anyway.”

E-mail achimbel@wfaa.com