People who had been fighting to save an historic red barn at Potato Creek State Park were angry this morning to learn the state came in over the weekend and tore it down.
They had made Save the Red Barn yard signs and t-shirts, and their support was growing with news coverage. Just last weekend they held a march and rally. But the Indiana Department of Natural Resources said the barn stood in the way of the new $100 million inn and conference center they’re building, and they had refused to discuss the matter with WVPE or with preservationists.
32-year-old Maggie Hesters’ great grandfather, Raymon Naragon, built the barn. She says on Monday morning she heard it had come down and so she drove out to the site, hoping to at least grab a memento.
Hesters says a worker with Indiana Earth Inc. told her the state had hired them to demolish the barn Monday. But they arrived to find that it had already been demolished sometime Saturday or Sunday.
So she says she asked the worker if someone else had demolished it.
”And he said, yes, the DNR did, because they were worried that someone would get word of it, and that people would show up and not allow them to proceed with tearing it down," Hesters said. "And I said, 'Oh OK, so did they use your equipment then?' Thinking to myself that it's not an easy job to move excavators around. Surely they just used the equipment that had already been there. But he said no, the DNR actually brought in their own equipment to tear it down and everything. So they definitely went through extra process just to make sure that it was torn down without any public knowledge."
The DNR again declined our interview request Monday.
