Fulton County Preserves Round Barn History

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round barnsThe story of Fulton County’s claim to fame as the Round Barn Capital of the World starts sometime around 1910. Charles Vallandingham Kindig, owner of C.V. Kindig Construction Co. – one of the county’s most prominent builders at the time – came across a magazine article advertising instructions for building a round barn. Kindig decided to give this peculiarly shaped barn design a try. He built the county’s first round barn for relatives, Elmer Wideman and his wife Lola (Kindig) Wideman, near Athens. In 2008, that barn was disassembled and loaded onto trucks headed to Martha’s Vineyard – another casualty of the round barn’s decline in Fulton County and throughout Indiana.

If You Go...


Fulton County Museum, Round Barn Museum, Living History Village
37 E 375 N (on west side of N. US 31)
Rochester, IN 46975
Phone: 574-223-4436
Web: fultoncountyhistory.org
Hours: Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., excluding holidays; please call ahead due to August 2015 storm damage.
Admission: Free

At one time, Indiana boasted around 225 round barns, and Fulton County claimed 17 of those. Today, the state’s number has dwindled to just under 100 barns and the county’s to only seven, which makes the work the Fulton County Historical Society is doing to preserve the history of these agricultural treasures even more important.

“If we don’t save some of these barns, people won’t know what all this historic architecture looked like,” says Melinda Clinger, director of the Fulton County Museum in Rochester.

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In 1989, the museum moved and restored a barn built in 1924 and converted it into what is now the Round Barn Museum, which commemorates the county’s role in round-barn history. The museum has horse-drawn farm equipment, buggies and covered wagons from the early 1900s. Its downstairs features mangers for horses and cows, as well as period horse harnesses and milking stations.

round barns
Clinger says Fulton County’s round barns were built between 1900 and 1925, with the Kindig construction company building 11 of the original 17. They varied in size, with the largest measuring 70 feet in diameter, but Clinger says the largest round barn in the state sets the record at 104 feet in diameter and three stories. The Round Barn Museum is 60 feet in diameter and two stories.

“Ours is a bank barn, which means it was built into the side of a hill,” Clinger says. “Back in the day, there were stalls for the animals in the bottom/basement part of the barn, and farmers could drive their equipment right into the top of the barn. That’s where they had the hay or the straw and grain bin and a trap door, so they could throw feed down to the animals without having to walk up and down the stairs.”

Clinger says round barns became a popular alternative to the traditional timber barn because they were “faster, easier and cheaper to build.”

round barns

“You didn’t have to go to a saw mill and have a 70-foot beam sawed,” she explains. “Most of the barns are made of 1-inch-thick green lumber, or they could soak it in the creek to make it pliable and bend like they needed it to.”

The Leedy family owned the barn where the museum now resides.

“They had a fire in their original barn, and winter was coming, so they needed a barn quickly and decided to have the Kindigs build them a round barn because they could get it raised in a short amount of time,” Clinger says.

In later years, round barns fell out of fashion because the size didn’t allow farmers to maneuver and store modern and much larger equipment, but Clinger says the round barn’s unique design may be attracting a new generation of admirers. One of Fulton’s County’s barns, for example, was moved to Baroda, Michigan, and is now a winery and reception hall. Another of the county’s barns was transformed into the headquarters and pro shop for the Round Barn Golf Club at Mill Creek in Rochester.

round barns

“With anything in history, if you don’t pass it on to the younger generations, then you also aren’t passing on that knowledge,” Clinger says. “We want to preserve that history for the entire community but especially our younger generation. Agriculture is such an important part of our county’s history, and we definitely want to make sure our kids know it.”

Editor’s note: Our magazine went to the printer prior to the devastating storms on Aug. 4, 2015, that ripped the roof off the Round Barn Museum. Please call ahead before planning a visit to the museum. 

3 Comments

  1. Shaunn Munn

    September 28, 2016 at 12:09 pm

    Why do you make it hard to see the pictures by muting them with “Pin it” junk?
    I don’t DO that stuff. Just want to see barns. Please don’t do this. I’m glad I’ve actually seen all those barns with my own eyes. I guess I’ll just try to remember them.

    • Sheila Hillberry

      May 13, 2019 at 4:17 pm

      If you save the picture to your photos, the “pin it” doesn’t go along.

  2. Isabelle Lousie Gordon

    July 21, 2022 at 11:10 pm

    So cool. My family are Kindigs and we got to talking about our history. My grandmother told me we are barn raisers and I’m so glad they protected this part of my family history. We now living in California but I hope to visit soon.

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