(Radio Iowa) – There’s been a dramatic decline in the total number of barns in Iowa over the past century and it’s estimated fewer than 75 in the extremely rare round design remain. Wayne Frost of the Iowa Barn Foundation says most of the round barns in the country were built between 1900 and 1920.  “There was some work in early 1900, some of it at Iowa State and other universities that linked a round barn to maybe being more efficient and less expensive to build,” Frost says.

By 1925, though, Iowa State Extension warned against round barn construction due to the expense of materials and how difficult it was to find carpenters with the skills needed to complete the complicated designs.  “If you look across our landscape, every barn we have is different,” Frost says. “Even every round barn is different. Oftentimes they would have a silo in the center of it.”

2021 photo of a Hardin County Round Barn (Iowa Barn Foundation Facebook post)

Round barns are so rare now that dozens are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There’s a 94-year-old round barn on the Plymouth County Fairgrounds in Le Mars. At this month’s State Fair, the Iowa Barn Foundation is building a small barn inside the Agriculture Building on the fairgrounds to promote their work. The group raises money and awards grants to people who are working to preserve barns on their property.