After acquiring a quarter section of land in 1870 through the Homestead Act of 1862, Scandinavian immigrants Nels Nelson (N.N.) Graff and his wife Elise built a dugout and lived there for their first three years. In 1873, Nels built the first permanent wooden-structured home in Brandon Township before the village of Brandon was platted in 1878. Using bur oaks growing along Split Rock Creek, he built a 14-by-17 foot log cabin with a basement, a loft above the main floor, and a shingled roof about 1,450 feet north northeast of here. Nels and Elise lived there with their four sons, Martin, Adolph, also known as A.N., and twins Elius and Neil; Elise died hours after giving birth to the twins. Over the years, their descendants lived in and built around the log home on its original red-rock foundation. The last resident was Carol Anderson Williams, whose mother, Oral Graff, was the granddaughter of A.N. Graff. In 2002, Dale Ellens, a great great-grandson of Nils Olsen, who was Nels' father, purchased the lot and the home, and after exploring several options for preserving the cabin, he gifted it to the Brandon Historical Society in 2016. The City of Brandon permitted the Society to move the cabin to Pioneer Park, on the southern part of the land Nels homesteaded in 1870.