Hot on Facebook

Guy Buys $123 Safe on eBay, Finds $26,000 Inside Seller tries to get half the cash back, fails »

Vermont Begins Push to Save Historic Barns

Historical preservation effort counts every chicken coop and corn crib

By Michael Roston, Newser User

Posted Oct 28, 2008 4:11 PM CDT

(Newser) – To Vermonters, the aging barns dotting their landscape are as important to the state's character—and tourism—as maple syrup or skiing. But the cost of maintaining them and the decline in family farms have taken a heavy toll, the Boston Globe reports. Now the state is conducting a "barn census" to catalog the structures that speak of Vermont's agricultural heritage as the first step toward preserving them.

"They're not just wood and stone," said the state's architectural historian, Nancy Boone. "They're about history, and they're about the life that happened inside them." With federal support, volunteers are logging every ash house and mink shed they find for an online map. Boone hopes the project will raise awareness and spur innovative ideas for preservation of the barns that still stand, estimated at between 5,000 and 20,000.

[Images (5)]

[Quotes (1)]

An undated photo of a barn on the West Shore Road in South Hero, Vermont. (Atlant/Wikimedia Commons)

A 2006 photo of Old Field Barn in Tunbridge, Vermont, known locally as Tucker's barn. (M.S. McGuire/Wikimedia Commons)

A billboard advertising the Village of Bellows Falls is seen on the side of a barn near Interstate 91 and Route 5 in Rockingham, Vt. Tuesday May 5, 2007. (AP Photo/Jason R. Henske)

A couple walks through freshly cut hay to their wedding ceremony at White Rocks Inn in Vermont, Aug. 25, 2006. The barn was assembled in 1888 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. (AP Photo/Rita Swogger)

An undated photo at the Joslin Round Barn Farm, in Waitsfield, Vermont. (National Park Service)

« Prev« Prev | Next »Next » Slideshow

They're a symbol of our natural and agricultural past. We were a nation of farmers for generations. - Jim Lindberg of the National Trust for Historic Preservation on barns

« Prev« Prev | Next »Next » Slideshow

To report an error on this story, notify our editors.

More Newser Stories

Man Pays Back Taxes in Pennies

He had to visit 10 banks to do it

(NEWSER) - The city of Hartford got its most annoying tax payment ever yesterday, when a man showed up with a hand truck full of more than 30,000 pennies. Brian Kiros was furious over his $301.76 tax bill: He’d moved to Vermont a year and a half earlier but had forgotten to return his Connecticut license plates, meaning taxes kept piling up. “I'm like, if they are going to bother me like this, I'm going to bother them,” he tells WFSB . More»

Wildfire Smoke Shrouds New England, Quebec

Blazes raging in Canadian forest send clouds hundreds of miles

(NEWSER) - Massive clouds of smoke from forest fires raging in Quebec have moved south and east across New England, screening the holiday-weekend sun throughout the region. "I just walked to the beach in Sandwich where you can usually see white cliffs in Plymouth, the Sagamore Bridge and sometimes the Provincetown Monument," a Cape Cod resident told WBZ , the CBS affiliate in Boston. "Can't see any of them today." More»

No Rush to Altar as Vermont Starts Marrying Gays

Fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage sees little demand

(NEWSER) - After 17 years together, a couple from upstate New York married at 12:01 this morning—the first same-sex couple to wed in Vermont. Today the Green Mountain State, which gave the US civil unions, becomes the fifth state and fourth in New England to allow gays and lesbians to marry. But as the AP reports, there hasn't been a major rush to the altar; city clerks say that only a handful of licenses have been issued. More»

NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS

What is Newser?

Face it: there's too much news. At Newser, we choose the most thought-provoking and entertaining stories from hundreds of US and international sources and reduce them to a headline, picture, and two paragraphs. And we do it 24/7—you can come back morning, noon, night (and in between) for something new that matters. Read less, know more.

Learn more »

Partnering with: Slate

View Newser on the mobile website

Vermont Begins Push to Save Historic Barns