Deer Park barn a family treasure
William Newell built the big red barn on his homestead west of Deer Park in 1935. He also built a farmhouse and other outbuildings, not an uncommon thing for a farmer to do back then.
In the days of active farming on the property, the barn was home to dairy cows and logging horses as well as floor-to-roof storage of loose hay.
The barn is an important structure for the Newell family. The property has been passed down to William’s son Robert and now to Robert’s son, Mike Newell, who lives on the remaining 53 acres of the original homestead with his wife, Margaret, and children, Luke, 8, and Shelby, 6.
Mike Newell is repairing and restoring the barn – with completion of a new roof the highest priority.
Newell keeps some cattle in the barn and hopes to store hay there once again. He also hopes the new Washington state Heritage Barn Register and grant program, intended to support the preservation of heritage barns, may help him add the family’s barn to the list of officially recognized historic barns in the state.
Gov. Chris Gregoire signed the legislation into law on May 4, establishing the preservation program for barns that meet certain criteria and establishing the heritage barn preservation fund, which can provide owners, nonprofit organizations and local governments with funding to help maintain the historic character of listed structures and stabilize endangered heritage barns.
A consultant is being sought to take an inventory of barns in the state. Only 27 barns in Washington are listed on any kind of historic register now, and just two of them are in Spokane County.
Information about the state Heritage Barn Register, details on what constitutes a potential historic barn and information about how to apply for historic barn designation are available at the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation’s Web site at www.dahp.wa.gov.
Newell’s barn is a good example of a Prairie barn, also known as a Western barn (and closely related to a Dutch barn). Its character-defining feature is the peaked hood above the hayloft. People have stopped by just to take a look at it, and it once was included in a calendar produced by a Deer Park businessman, Newell said.
The barn is just more than 50 feet high and is 85 feet long and 75 feet wide.
“When it was built, it was thought to be the biggest barn of its kind in the state of Washington,” Newell said.