Bingham barn gets helping hand

By JoAn Bjarko
North Forty News

A rare timber frame barn that stands along Bingham Hill Road near Bellvue will gain additional longevity thanks to barn preservation enthusiasts and a grant from the Colorado State Historical Fund.

In late June, internationally renowned restoration expert Rudy Christian of Burbank, Ohio, led a workshop that let other restoration buffs stabilize the barn built by settler Samuel Bingham around 1870.

"For a 130-year-old barn, it's in exceptional shape," said Christian as he directed the crew on ways to strengthen the rafters with cables until additional funding can complete a restoration.

To the delight of those who enjoy historic barns, Bingham applied the craft of timber framing to the use of local wood and stone when building the barn. Very few settlers of the West took the time to employ that technique.

Christian also pointed out the homesteader's "square rule layout," a 200-year-old form of laying out timbers that Christian called "the result of American ingenuity."

In addition to farming and ranching, Bingham worked at processing railroad ties at Tie Siding, Wyo., a skill evident in the barn's ponderosa pine timbers. Four 30-foot long, 8x8 timbers, hewn with axes in the woods, are still holding everything together, and the floor planks show diagonal felling cuts.

Barn owner Ken Fisher credits Peter Haney, the founder of Rocky Mountain Workshops Traditional Building Crafts in Fort Collins, with spurring the project. "Peter rode his bike by here and stopped," Fisher explained. "He asked if I was interested in looking into restoration."

Fisher said the question came at a good time for the barn that is missing its north side. "I wondered what I was going to do with it," explained the Pleasant Valley rancher.

Christian, who is past president of the Timber Framers Guild, noted that the recent efforts will only keep the barn from deteriorating further. "The hope is that the opportunity to fix the barn will come in the near future," he said.

This is a good time to pursue restoration projects, Christian continued, because practitioners have learned so much about the craft in the last 20 years. "Unless you know how they were built, you can't repair them," he added, saying the Bingham Homestead barn can very easily be brought back to a safe and usable condition while maintaining the barn's authenticity.

Fisher added that he hopes the restoration project can be put together with a series of workshops.

To make the barn stabilization project a success, seven workshop members contributed a combined 224 hours to assess damage and pitch in with their labor: Terry Schmitz of Bellvue, Geoff Robinson of Wellington, Kent Shepard of Nederland, Gregg Doster of Fort Collins, Jamie Clapper of Denver, Kent Rector of Durango and Bob Fulton of Westcliffe.

Chris Koziol, director of the Architectural Preservation Institute at Colorado State University, which organized the workshop, said this presented an exceptional opportunity to work on a large project. "It's good to find a willing owner," he said.

One goal of the workshop, he added, is to dispel the myth that no one can do this type of restoration.