Visit Before They Disappear

I found Isaac B. Werner's journal in February of 2010 and began this blog in September of 2011.  One of my favorite posts is "Disappearing Traces of the Past" published 12-23-2011.  Since starting this blog I have written about many subjects that reflect the disappearance of places and people that gave us a glimpse of the past.  This week is a reminder of how rapidly historic icons are slipping away, leaving future generations less able to picture the past with anything other than old photographs and printed texts.  Not all relics can be saved, but perhaps we should be reminded to take a long look before they disappear completely, and maybe even set aside an afternoon to tour our communities  with our children and grandchildren, sharing stories of some of those relics before they are gone.  

So many old barns have disappeared in the past decade since I began this blog, and "Disappearing Old Barns" was the subject of my 1-15-2015 blog.  The grand old barn that had stood on a small rise just north of the Kansas Forestry, Fish & Game headquarters east of Pratt was featured in that blog, and now it is gone.  With few farms keeping a family milk cow, the need for the grand old wooden barns has disappeared, replaced by the practical but less picturesque metal sheds that house equipment.

Original St. John Opera House

The Repurposed Opera House as the City Hall

My series of blogs about early opera houses was deferred so long that when I finally posted "Stafford (KS) Opera House" on 8-7-2014 I learned that the Weide Opera House had been demolished between the time I took photographs and finally posted the blog.  The "St. John (KS) Convention Hall & Opera House" 6-26-2014 blog shares an example of old buildings being saved by repurposing.  However, unless young people living today are told about the building's history, they may never know its original use.

Emerson Shields with  me

Keepers of our history are also people, and my blog "Interviewing Relatives of Isaac's Neighbors," 6-16-2016 shared my conversation with Milton John, which I am grateful to have had before his death soon after.  One of Stafford County's best known history keepers of W.W. II made an appearance in my blog "Veterans Then and Now" 11-22-16.  Although Emerson Shields did not speak at the Macksville High School ceremony on Veteran's Day 2016 he was there at age 92 in uniform, and an overflow crowd at the Stafford auditorium that day may have been the last group to have benefited from hearing Emerson's firsthand account as a W.W. II pilot, for he passed away only a short time later.

Still Standing

Sometimes these reminders of the past disappear almost before our eyes.  Because I am always on the lookout for historical subjects for this blog, we paused along Highway 281 to photograph an old homestead a few months ago.  The photograph at right shows what is no more, for a strong windstorm collapsed the aging house with all of its memories.  We paused again to photograph its collapse.

After the collapse

So in this New Year, look around you.  Observe the century old cottonwoods that are rapidly falling.  Pause to remember the empty churches that will soon be demolished.  Share stories of Saturday nights when soldiers from the Pratt Airbase crowded into the Barron Theater which has been repurposed as a youth center.  Find your own places to visit before they disappear, and make time to talk with a living history keeper.  And if you can, take someone younger along with you to carry this disappearing history into another generation.

You may click on images to enlarge them, and by using the Blog Archive top right on this page you can access by year and date all of the past blogs mentioned in this week's blog.

Classic Midwestern Barns

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

By now my husband knows to start slowing the car in anticipation of making a stop for photographs if a barn appears on the horizon.  As we returned from Red Cloud, NE after attending the Willa Cather Conference, we spotted this classic Midwestern barn surrounded by an ocean of still-green wheat.  My husband pulled off the road and got out his cell phone to begin checking message, for he knew my 'photo shoot' was likely to take a while!

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

There are many styles of barns across the American landscape, all sharing the common need to accommodate the weather and available materials of their locale.  Farmers built their barns to shelter livestock and whatever crops were grown in that area.  Sometimes the region of the world from which the farmers in the community had immigrated influenced the architectural style, and local custom also tended to develop within a community.

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

Preservationists and barn hobbyists often use general categories to describes the variations in barn styles:  Bank Barns, Round or Polygonal Barns, Tobacco Barns, English Barns, Dutch Barns, Crib Barns, and Prairie or Western Barns.  

I'm not sure exactly why this Prairie Barn stole my heart.  Perhaps it was its isolation, the farm stead that had almost certainly once been there long since replaced by crop land.  Or, it may have been the vulnerability of its opened doorways that bared its interior to the eyes of anyone who paused to look.  Somehow the clouds almost seemed to be an artists' contrivance to draw the viewer's eye to the abandoned barn.  

I know that many of you who visit my blog regularly have a special fondness for old barns, so I thought you would enjoy this one.

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

These old barns are disappearing rapidly, and several that I photographed for this blog no longer exist.  Near cities they are disappearing to urban sprawl, but in central Kansas other reasons are more likely.  (See "Disappearing Old Barns," 1-15-2015 in the blog archives.)  Near our farm, the increasing size of farming operations has eliminated many former homesteads, and the barns were burned or allowed to deteriorate.  Few farmers keep horses, and fewer still keep a milk cow for the family.  Where there are dairy farms the changed sanitation regulations often make the use of old barns obsolete.  As farm equipment has increased in size, using old barns as storage sheds is often impossible, their doors too narrow to allow the passage of modern tractors and equipment.  Hay mows are of no purpose for the large 'round bales' that are generally stored outside and are too large to get into the old-fashioned hay mows if the farmer preferred to store them under a roof.  Grain bins in barns and wooden granaries have been replaced by metal storage.  (See "What Do I Do with My Grain, (Storing Grain), Parts I & II, blog archives 1/2/2014 and 1/9/2014.) 

Isaac B. Werner never kept cattle,  He built sheds for his horses, and sometimes he built a "self-feeding horse shed" from bundles of hay.  Probably the largest barn in his community belonged to his neighbor in Clear Creek Township, John Garvin, who held a Christmas party in his barn in 1888 attended by about 250 neighbors, including Isaac.

To read interesting articles about efforts to save old barns you may visit http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&content= titled Preserving the Midwestern Barn by Hemalata C. Dandekar and Eric Allen MacDonald, and also http://www.nps.gov/tps/how-to-preserve/briefs/20-barns.htm. 

Disappearing Old Barns

For as long as I could remember the stately barn pictured at left sat on a hillside north of the Kansas Forestry, Fish & Game complex near Pratt, Ks, located in what had once been the Saratoga community.  (See "Cemetery on a Hill," 2-7-2013 in the blog archives.)  In September of 2013 my husband and I paused to take several photographs of the barn.  While traveling the road recently, I was saddened to see that it is gone.  In the past, most farms had a wooden barn, with a loft for hay and the main floor for milking.  Few of those old barns remain.

The Moore Family barn

A friend recently posted a photograph of his old family barn. While it lacks the cupola of the Saratoga structure, it has the same "barn roof" and lean-to on one side, characteristics common to barns in the area.   It also has the loft door and the overhanging roof on which a pulley apparatus would have been used to lift hay to the second level.

Sadly, it was the second picture of the barn posted by my friend that motivated me to write this blog.  Sometimes barns are torn down when the farmstead is abandoned in order to make way for more crop land.  Sometimes the barns are left to decay and rot, eventually collapsing.  However, sometimes the old wooden structures burn.

The fire that destroyed the Moore family barn

Fire is what took down the Moore barn.  A structure that has stored decades of hay, which has often become packed in the walls, as well as years of fine grain dust, presents fuel for a hot fire.  In addition, the early shingles were usually wood, as was the siding.  

Some fires are set intentionally as a quick way to be rid of an unused structure, but other barns are still in use when they catch fire.  By the time the local fire truck can reach the blaze, it is often too late to save the building, and the firemen are engaged in trying to save other buildings on the farm by limiting the spread of the fire.

The Beck Family barn

My family's barn was very similar to the barns pictured above.  After it was gone, I created this pastel painting of the old barn where my brother and I (as well as my father, his siblings, and many cousins) had played and where my father and his father had milked cows.  Our hay was stacked on the sides of the loft to leave room in the center for a basketball court, the baskets hung on the walls under the peaked roof.  If you could dribble the basketball from one end to the other on the warped old board floor, a polished gym floor seemed easy!  The barn was home to generations of farm cats who kept themselves fed on barn mice.  The loft also stored old furniture and trunks holding interesting things which supplied props for young girls playing house.

The new Beck-Fenwick barn

Before my father's death, he had commented on the sadness of seeing abandoned farmsteads with dilapidated barns slowly collapsing.  To satisfy his wishes, we had sold the barn to a lumber merchant who disassembled it and sold the weathered lumber to people who used it in construction and decorating, appreciating the naturally aged wood.

When my husband and I rescued the old homestead, we asked the contractor to built our new metal barn on the site of the old barn's foundation, and we mimicked the appearance.  Unfortunately, our barn lacks the childhood romance of the old loft, and it has never held a cow!