Historic preservationists are sounding the alarm about the state of Indiana’s plans to demolish a 117-year-old barn at Potato Creek State Park. They could be running out of time.
Before the state opened the six-square-mile park near North Liberty in 1983, farmers and property owners had to give up their land for it in the 1960s and ‘70s. As the state builds a new lodge there, it says an old red barn built in 1908 stands in the way and must be demolished.
The nonprofit Friends of Potato Creek State Park caught wind of this last Saturday during their meeting, and they’re urgently trying to save the barn, known as the Naragon Barn for the family that built it.
Gene Matzat lives two miles from the park and is a charter member of the group with his wife Linda.
"Residents that live in the area now are descendants of those folks that lived there and so there's quite a bit of emotion, quite a bit of memories of people being in those farm buildings and those houses that had occupied what is now the park."
Before the state can demolish an historic structure, the law requires a review by the Indiana Historic Preservation Review Board.
Indiana Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Holly Lawson declined WVPE’s interview request. But in a written statement Lawson said the DNR Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology found the barn does not qualify for a state or federal historic preservation listing because it “does not stand out from other examples,” and that “the barn currently lacks physical context.”
In other words, the rest of the original farms buildings are gone.
But that doesn’t mean the barn isn’t worth saving, says Mark Kurth, with the nonprofit Indiana Barns Foundation. Kurth says the state is using a loophole as barns are never eligible for historic register listing unless other components of the original farm are also still standing.
The Friends group is asking the state to delay the demolition for six months so that it can raise money to disassemble the barn, store it, and put it back together somewhere else on the park property.
