All-State Barn Tour showcases restored rural treasures across Iowa

Next weekend, a different type of barnstorming will be happening across Iowa’s entire countryside as spectators go on the only tour of its type in the country.

On Sept. 16 and 17, the centerpiece of farms across Iowa will become one big museum for rural and city folks alike as barn owners demonstrate the beauty, history and complexity of iconic structures that have survived long past their heyday.

With 72 barns on this year’s tour, including a record number of round or octagonal barns, the Iowa Barn Foundation invites the public to marvel at the treasures they formed to restore starting in 1997.

“These are true architectural marvels that aren’t appreciated,” said Dave Austin, Iowa Barn Foundation board member and editor of the nonprofit’s biannual magazine. “You might see a big silo that seems stately, but it’s not until you’re inside that you can see the craftsmanship that went into construction.”

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Iowans who think they’ve seen all there is to see of barns across their inherently rural state should think again.

Unlike other tours where travelers can see barns through their windshield, this tour offers the chance to go inside and speak to the owners.

“There’s no other tour like it in the country where you can go inside them,” Austin said. “You can go inside, experience the barn and learn.”

What you’ll see

With so many options across the state, Austin has a couple suggestions to plan your route.

Take a look at the list online, divided by region, and pick a couple that stand out to you. Then, find other barns nearby.

Of this year’s highlighted selection of eight round and octagonal barns, five are in Eastern Iowa:

Once you get there, go inside and explore. Take a look at the bones of each building and eye the framing from the inside out.

For barns built after 1900, you’ll notice the trademarks of milled lumber. In barns built before that, you’ll see the distinct marks of 19th century barns — beams, rafters, mortars, joints sealed with wooden pegs, ax marks, and lumber still decorated with the bark from their trees.

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Tour the former livestock areas, noting a structure unique to the time each barn was built. In the early 1900s, the transition from horses to tractors changed the way barns were used and built. Some areas were converted to hold other types of livestock, like hogs.

For the ambitious, climb into the rafters to see the hay loft, where available. There, you can see the underside of the roof with unique construction methods that pieced together support for buildings underscoring Iowa’s beginnings with small but multipurpose, family farms.

“Settlers built the barn, and then the house. It was the center point of the farmstead, the gathering point,” Austin said. “It’s that chance to step back in time and put yourself into the shoes of what early settlers had — to get out of the city and step back in time to appreciate all farmers did so folks could get to the city.”

Each annual tour’s selection rotates from a selection of 150 barns, all of which have been restored through grants or have awards for their distinct features. Many are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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“It’s anything but ordinary,” Austin reminds owners. “There’s very few that are identical.”

What you’ll learn

There are often two types of people who tour barns: those who reminisce about a past where they grew up with barns, and those who have never really spent time in one — an experience many in today’s generation don’t get, even if they grow up on a modern farm.

Many are amazed by learning what went into barn construction — the labor, the amount of lumber, the craftsmanship and how many were built by hand.

“Science, technology and innovation were on the forefront of every farm in the state,” Austin said. “That’s not apparent to the general public until they go see the interiors of these barns.”

Take, for example, the Secrest Octagonal Barn in Johnson County’s West Branch. Built in 1883, the showcase debuting on this year’s tour offers a rare glimpse at a trend that briefly got traction in the early 20th century.

The largest surge in Iowa round barn construction started around 1910 after universities like Iowa State promoted them for dairy operations. The circular interior was pitched as a more efficient layout for farmers, with advantages in construction and structural stability.

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But with time, many found the efficiency claims to be overstated, and construction largely ended at the end of the 1920s.

Out of about 200,000 barns built in Iowa, only 250 were round. Only 74 remain standing today, many in various states of disrepair.

The 1883 Secrest Octagonal Barn features an eight-sided bell-shaped roof topped with a cupola 72 feet above the ground. Laminated ribs supporting the roof were created by soaking boards in water, bending them into shape, and using square nails to hold layers of boards into place.

The resulting free span haymow doubles as a work of art, while the rest of the barn represents the perseverance and ingenuity of America’s early farmers.

At its construction, newspapers hailed the three-story barn as “the largest building of the kind in the country” with room for 32 horses, 16 cows and 200 tons of hay. Built into a hillside, the second story acted as a front ramp to unload wagons of hay that was transported to the third level using a fork and rope system.

The quality and sturdiness of its construction, using horses and devised pulley systems for assembly, it credited in part with its longevity

“There is no barn like it anywhere else in the world,” owner Rich Tyler told the Iowa Barn Foundation.

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When he first purchased the barn in 1992, he was simply looking for a farmstead where he could enjoy time with his family. Today, the Iowa Humanities speaker gives talks on the historical barn opened to the public. The barn is this year’s recipient of the Iowa Barn Foundation Award of Distinction.

“While I had always been interested in architecture, little did I know that my quick decision (to purchase) had just started the project of a lifetime to save an Iowa treasure,” he said.

Since its founding in 1997, the nonprofit Iowa Barn Foundation has raised more than $2 million to help restore and preserve more than 300 barns.

Comments: (319) 398-8340; elijah.decious@thegazette.com