We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
In 1901 George Petrie homesteaded an area north of Turner known as Mutton Hollow. This Gothic arch style barn was built in 1916 on the Louie Petrie Ranch. Gothic-arch style barns were popular on western ranches and farms until the 1930's.
Three generations of Obrechts, part of the Petrie family, pose in front of the century old barn built in 1916: (l-r) Fifth generation Tyrel and wife Lindsey, fourth generation Linda and Sam and third generation Nellie and Sonny. Louie Petrie and Frances, Nellie's parents, were the second generation to work the ranch. George Petrie and his wife, Nellie, homesteaded Mutton Hollow in 1901.
This photo shows the rafters all hand-cut, nailed and bolted together to support the round roof of the Petrie barn. The roof support style created more usable and unhindered space in the haymow. Gothic style cathedrals in Europe inspired the support concept adapted for barns.
Sam Obrecht, great grandson of homesteader George Petrie, shows where a crew of workmen signed an inside door (see arrows) at the end of their project on the old barn. Sam explained the door had been signed by earlier work crews, though names are now hard to see, and he wanted to continue the tradition.
I saw the bright red barn on the Louie Petrie Ranch during the Montana Angus tour a couple of years ago. Sonny and Nellie Obrecht told me some of the history of the barn at that time but only recently was I able to visit the Big Flat and learn about the barn. In 1901 George Petrie came from Minnesota and homesteaded the main part of the ranch a few miles north of Turner and still referred to as Mutton Hollow. Three generations of the Petrie family currently operate the ranch. George Petrie's great, great grandson Tyrel, and wife Lindsey, are the fifth generation working the ranch.
George had the barn built in 1916. The story is that a builder named Buttoff (as best can be recalled) built two barns of this style in the area. Only the one at Mutton Hollow still stands. It is believed the wood for the barn was brought by rail to Harlem, then by wagon to the ranch. The barn is a Gothic-arch style popular in the early 1900's. The barn measures 43 X 60 feet and sits on a concrete foundation and floor. From ground to the roof peak measures 43 feet. Gothic-arch barns were popular in the Midwest and west from the late 1880's until the 1930's.
Gothic-arch style barns had a number of advantages
Gothic-arch barns use a roof design adapted from European cathedrals built during the 12th to 16th centuries where no internal supports for the roof. Rather than trusses and cross beams, a series of curved rafters go from the floor to the roof point and support the roof. The major advantage of a Gothic-arch barn was the more efficient use of the space in the haymow for storing loose hay. The curved roof supports eliminated the loss of storage near the floor. As mechanical hoists were developed to get hay into haymows, those devices could run unimpeded along the roof line and get hay to wherever it needed to be stored.
Also as ranching and farming moved west, the lack of large stands of hardwood meant a barn style with fewer large beams and roof trusses was needed. By the 1930's hay balers and powered equipment improved handling and storing of hay. With the advent of large, round bales in the 1960's, the need to store hay inside diminished, as did the need for barns with large haymows.
The Petrie barn was repurposed through the years
Per Sonny and Nellie, the barn was originally built with stalls for work and saddle horses, space for horse tack and some specialized feed storage for both horses and sheep, all on the ground floor. The upper level haymow was used to store the hay that was 'forked' down to the horses. The main purpose was to provide shelter and food for the horses.
A wagon-width alleyway runs down the center of the ground level of the bar. Midway is a large opening that accesses the hayloft. The cut hay was loaded by hand on to a wagon with 'slings' laid across the wagon bed. The wagons would be pulled in to the alleyway, the horses rehooked to a lifting hoist and the hoist hooked to a sling creating a round bale of loose hay. That 'bale' was then lifted into the haymow and moved to an area for storage. A jerk line tripped the sling, opening it and dropping the hay into the loft.
In 1953, George's son, Louie Petrie, sold the sheep and bought an Angus herd, starting the cattle operation that still defines the ranch. Sonny explained that over the years, with more mechanization, there was less and less need for work horses and baled hay was stored outside. He said, "When I got here in the early 1960's we had very few horses. We used the lower area to store tack and cake to feed the cattle." More recently some of the lower space has been adapted to store cattle feed, including a room turned into storage for loose oats that is fed to the heifer calves.
Maintaining the historic barn:
what's next?
Sonny Obrecht told, "In the late 1940's or early 1950's, a windstorm moved some of the walls and 'twisted' the building but the barn still stood." With the addition of inside cables, reinforced walls and outside support beams, the building was saved. More recently Sonny said, "Sam (his son) and I jacked up a sagging wall, retightened the cables and reset the support beams." In 2010 a major project involved replacing some of the concrete foundation that had broken and was letting walls move. All the family agreed that latter project "was necessary and likely saved the barn."
In the last few years some metal siding has been added to the front of the barn. And the roof was re-shingled. Nellie said, "The shingling project was in the budget for 12 years before we could get it done." She added, "Much of the work on the barn was like Johnny Cash's Cadillac, we did it 'one piece at a time.' At the end of the year if we had any money left over, it went in to preserving the barn."
So, what's next for the old barn? There seems to be some divergence of opinion among the stakeholders (the family). Nellie put it succinctly, "That's a bit of a bone of contention." For Sonny, it's a labor of love. He explained, "I love history and the barn has a lot of family history in it. I want to maintain it and keep it."
Sam, Nellie and Sonny's son, added, "We've put a lot of money into keeping the barn. What happens is up to the next generation." Whatever the future holds for the iconic barn all the Petrie generations agree the barn is a part of the family's history as well as the region's.
