48
DESTINATION VASHON || 2010–2011
Heritage barns:
a story of Island life
Ray Pfortner Photo
B
arns tell a story, says Islander and historic preservationist Holly Taylor.
They speak to our connection to the land, she says. The way they’re built — hand-crafted or from a kit, Europeaninfluenced or not — says something about our heritage and much about our past. And on Vashon, she said, barns are particularly interesting. They’re small and intimate, reflecting a subsistence-farm culture far different from the large-scale dairy farming of, say, the Skagit Valley. Some were built from hand-hewn timber, others with lumber milled at nearby mills. “Our barns tend to be connected to family farms — not the big industrial farms,” she said. Designed to fit the Island’s sometimes steep topography, many of these barns sit snug on the land. Few were built by kits, she added, a popular way in the early part of the 20th century to build a barn. “Sears had a barn book. You could
order the entire thing,” she said. “That never happened here. We didn’t have access to the transportation system.”
walk past, remember these barns sit on private property — and respect the owners’ privacy.
Julie Koler, preservation officer for the King County Historic Preservation Program, noted the “amazing little family farms with two-cow barns” that once dotted Vashon and Maury islands. “There were scores of them all over the Island, many of them on the west side,” she said. The ones that remain, she said, “are the last remnants.”
The Hofmeister Barn in Paradise Valley is the largest documented barn on the Island. Built in 1910, this high-gabled, timber-frame barn was built on property homesteaded by German immigrants in 1884. Known today as the Tucker Barn, after its owners Bob and Laurie Tucker, the structure is located at 10718 S.W. 216th Street. The Tuckers, with the support of a King County grant, have “done some really nice work on it,” Taylor said.
According to Taylor, the Island boasts about 25 barns old enough to be eligible for the Washington Heritage Barn Register. A few of them have been beautifully restored in recent years — some with funds provided by a special King County grant program. Many are tucked behind homes or down long private roads; others are prominent features on the landscape — proud icons of Vashon’s agrarian past. Here are a few that can be viewed easily from the road. But if you drive, cycle or
The Kvisvik-Martindale Farm in Colvos has the most impressive chicken houses remaining on the Island. Visible from S.W. 156th Street or 119th Avenue S.W., the chicken houses were built in the 1920s. The larger of the two is an impressive 110 feet in length. In the early 20th century, chicken ranches were a critically important part of the Island’s economy, with hundreds of family farms producing millions of eggs and chickens for market.