The historic Round Barn of Arcadia, Oklahoma, is throwing a party Sunday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the restoration of the Route 66 landmark.
According to The Oklahoman newspaper, the Arcadia Historical and Preservation Society’s open house from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday will include a 2 p.m. ceremony to introduce special guests that include descendants of Round Barn restorer Luke Robison and builders William Odor and J.H. Keely.
Darren Robison, 56, of Midwest City, was a teenager when his “Granddaddy” Luke Robison and fellow retired carpenters undertook the restoration of the barn, which had fallen into disrepair and had been transferred from private ownership to that of the historical society, a news release stated. As a student at the University of Central Oklahoma, he drove from Edmond to help with the repairs.
“We jacked up the barn with massive 30-ton jacks just to get it level,” Darren Robison recalled.
Eventually the workers were faced with the job of tying together the rafters in the massive domed roof, which had collapsed before the restoration began.
“He had built a scaffold 36 feet above the second floor, which was way up there,” Darren Robison said of Luke Robison, who died in 1997. “It was scary. We worked on the rafters a week or more just to get them all tied together.”
In 1993, the National Trust for Historic Preservation honored those involved in the restoration of the Round Barn with a National Honor Award for outstanding craftsmanship and preservation.
William Odor, who also co-founded Arcadia, built the barn at his farm in 1898. He used native bur oak boards soaked while green and forced into the curves needed for the walls and rafters. He reputedly chose the round shape because it allegedly was tornado-proof.
Restorers used the same bent-boards method to restore the barn nearly 90 years later, soaking them in a nearby creek.
A good PBS video about the Round Barn can be viewed below:
A dirt road designated as State Highway 7 was built between the barn and the railroad tracks in 1914. That road became U.S. 66 a dozen years later.
(Image of the Round Barn by George Thomas via Flickr)