Saturday, November 28, 2009

Barns of Lawrence County

“The Barns of Lawrence County” will be featured Tuesday evening (12/1/09) at the December meeting of the Spearfish Area Historical Society. The presentation, which is open to the public, begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Spearfish Senior Citizen’s Center.

The barn shown here belongs to Ralph and Becky Crago and is located just north of Spearfish near the Red Water River. It is one of 37 barns featured in the program.

Long-time Spearfish resident Leo Orme will resurrect select images from more than 2,000 barn photographs collected as part of a display at the High Plains Western Heritage Center nearly a decade ago. It was originally prepared to complement a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution.

A native of Colorado, Orme came to South Dakota in 1969 to lead a U.S. Fish and Wildlife project at the McNenny Fish Hatchery west of Spearfish. As a 4-H leader and later as an SDSU Extension Agent in Lawrence County, he became well acquainted with agricultural interests in the region – including barns. Orme, who worked with Bob and Ann Matheney to assemble the original exhibit, says an updated book on Lawrence County barns will be published in the near future.