At first, Kent Yeager noticed the losses the way many other Hoosiers probably have — through his windshield.
Driving the winding two-lane highways and narrow country roads through southern Indiana, he would pass barns he had recognized as local landmarks for decades and realize they were quickly fading from the landscape.
One had a caved-in roof. Another leaned sharply after years of neglect. Others had simply vanished, leaving farmland or suburban sprawl where towering wooden structures once stood like rural cathedrals.
While no hard numbers exist, historians believe hundreds of thousands of Indiana barns have disappeared over the last century. Preservationist Duncan Campbell estimates Indiana had as many as 300,000 barns in 1900 and that only about 20,000 of these historic structures exist today.
Of those that remain, many are in need of costly repairs. But Yeager, Campbell and a host of volunteers from the Indiana Barn Foundation are on a mission to help preserve these iconic symbols of rural Indiana.
Aside from their own efforts, they also are encouraged by recent private restoration projects that have transformed some old barns into restaurants, wedding venues and even a dental practice.
“We’re not going to save all of them,” said Yeager, now president of the barn foundation. “But if we can save some of them so future generations can understand what farming looked like in Indiana, then that’s worthwhile.”
Growing support
Yeager, who spent his life in agriculture, as a Harrison County farmer and in leadership roles with the Indiana Farm Bureau and the federal Farm Service Agency, wasn’t always so attuned to preservation.
In the early 2010s, Yeager wasn’t sure what, if anything, could be done to save the barns.
The 73-year-old knew that old timber barns were becoming obsolete as the number of farms shrunk drastically over the past century and the cost of saving potentially unneeded buildings was cost-prohibitive for many people.
“I didn't appreciate these old barns for most of my life,” Yeager said. “There are just so many things I wish I would have asked and wished I would have held on to and thought were a little more valuable 40 or 50 years ago.”
His perspective changed in 2013 after conversations with Mauri Williamson, the late agricultural leader and preservation advocate who helped spark what would become the Indiana Barn Foundation and urged Yeager to get involved.
He and a devoted group of volunteers have worked to slowly grow the organization over the past 13 years — to the point that it now offers small preservation grants, organizes workshops, connects barn owners with expert preservation contractors and hosts annual barn tours.
With the help of a $100,000 grant from the Indiana Landmarks, the barn foundation last year hired its first executive director.
“That has really made it possible for us to move a lot of things along,” said Yeager, who hopes to save enough barns to educate Hoosiers about the state’s early agricultural roots.
Saving Indiana’s rarest barns
When an EF-1 tornado struck the state’s largest round barn in 2023, Gary Kingen thought it was a goner.
The tornado near McCordsville shifted the massive barn about six inches off its foundation in places. Built in 1900 for attorney and state legislator Frank Littleton, the barn measures 102 feet in diameter — intentionally designed to surpass the 100-foot round barn of Congressman Wymond Beckett in Dearborn County.
“For about a month, I thought it wasn’t going to make it,” said Kingen, whose family became stewards of the farm in 1903.
But the Indiana Barn Foundation quickly referred him to Galesburg, Illinois-based Firmitas LLC, a contractor that specializes in historic wooden structures, and soon Kingen had a repair plan that would eventually cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Repairs included rebuilding foundation walls, reinforcing structural supports and stabilizing the roof system.
“It’s more solid now than it’s ever been,” said Kingen, who sees that as a blessed development for a cherished building that links back to his great-grandfather and holds many memories of childhood games and tunnel-building amid the hay.
Round barns and others shaped as octagons and polygons were popular between 1880 and 1920. Their design was thought to be more efficient, offering central silos for fast feeding of dairy cattle and providing more wind resistance than the more common rectangular builds.
But round barns are becoming increasingly rare.
A statewide survey conducted by photographer and geologist John T. Hanou found that at least 266 round and polygonal barns were built in Indiana prior to 1950 and that only 71 of those were still standing as of mid-2020.
That rarity is partly why the barn foundation has been active in promoting fundraising and drawing attention to the historic Rudicel-Montgomery barn in Shelby County — a 12-sided structure built in 1910 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
About $105,000 had been raised as of early May as preservationists worked to determine exactly how much would be needed to restore the deteriorating barn.
“There is such an affinity for this barn from people who grew up here and now live across the country that we’ve had donations from as far away as Washington,” said Rachael Ackley, director of Shelby County Tourism and Visitors Bureau, which is among the supporters of the fundraising effort.
Sparing traditional barns
The foundation also spends much of its time helping owners preserve more traditional rectangular barns — including some that still serve their original purpose.
That was the case for Troy and Amber Schipper.
When the couple bought a nine-acre Wabash County property near Roann in late 2023, the historic barn was in rough shape.
The roof had peeled off. Trees had grown into the structure. The floor had to be replaced. Doors were destroyed or missing. Groundhogs had filled portions of the lower level with dirt.
Without intervention, the Schippers believed the barn, built in the 1910s, would not have survived much longer.
The family restored it with the guidance of a barn foundation volunteer and the help of a $2,500 preservation grant from the organization.
Today, hay fills the upper level and beef cattle occupy the lower level — exactly the kind of agricultural use the barn was originally built for.
The grant covered only a small portion of the restoration, which cost tens of thousands of dollars. But the foundation hopes its modest grants provide at least some incentive for owners to preserve the historic structures rather than demolish them.
“It maybe buys the paint at the end,” executive director Christine Page said.
Finding new glory
Yeager said another positive development for restoration is the rise of barns as wedding venues over the past decade.
At least 90 barn and farm venues in Indiana are listed as wedding venues on the Wedding Wire website. While some of those are new builds, others were restoration projects.
Deb Conner, treasurer of the barn foundation, said she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to convert her grandparents’ circa 1890 barn in Wabash County into a wedding venue called The Rustic Barn at Hopewell.
She believes customers like her barn because they can rent it for an entire weekend and host all wedding-related events — from the rehearsal dinner to the wedding ceremony and reception — at one location.
The primary enjoyment for her is sharing a bit of her family’s history with wedding guests. “This is a family place. I like people who come and truly appreciate that,” Conner said.
Barns are also being transformed into short-term vacation rental units, wineries and agritourism centers for apple orchards, pumpkin patches and more. A dental practice in Fort Wayne even moved into a restored barn and dubbed it Tooth Acres.
The barn foundation has been a cheerleader for what is probably the biggest reuse project in the state: a new restaurant and event center located in a restored 10,600-square-foot barn that was disassembled in Hamilton County and moved to the Discovery Park District at Purdue University.
Cunningham Restaurant Group opened the venue, dubbed The Lawrence, in February.
The historic barn was donated by Beck’s Hybrids CEO Sonny Beck and his family. Inside, it now features the work of the barn foundation through an art and photo display of historic barns from around the state.
For Yeager, that work remains deeply personal and urgent because he has watched the disappearing act happen in real time from his own front porch.
“I could have stepped outside of my house at one time and counted 13 barns,” he said. “Now there is one of those that you can see from here.”
Greg Weaver is an FPI News freelance contributor.
This article first appeared on FPI News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.