Postcards from the Field: Knotts Owen Barn
This week Richard and our preservation associate Catherine Cuthbert took a trip out to Corvallis to survey a historic 1870 barn that we are working with the owners to stabilize and preserve. This barn, called the Knotts Owens Barn, was listed as one of Restore Oregon’s 2013-14 Most Endangered Places.
Here are some pictures from our first look at the place:
About the Knotts Owen Barn (from the Restore Oregon website)
The Knotts-Owens Barn is one of a handful of hand-hewn barns standing in Benton County today. This rare farmstead complex is regionally significant because it shows the evolution of a family farm from the settlement era through the 20th century.
The storyline of the Knotts-Owens farmstead begins in 1849 when Iowa natives William and Sylvia Knotts received a 640-acre donation land claim three miles north of present-day downtown Corvallis. The farmstead has stayed in the same family and the existing collection of buildings date to the 1870s, providing an excellent example of subsistence farming around the Mid-Willamette Valley. The complex consists of a farmhouse, machine shed, pump house, brooder house, and the barn.
Read more about this endangered place here.
We’ll keep you posted about the progress of this important preservation project.
See More Stories
