Old Western Barn with faded logo
I have often admired an old western barn with what looked like a faded Chevy logo as we made our treks from Portland to Seattle and back. Since I am fond of old barns as demonstrated by an earlier post here, I vowed to someday stop and take some pictures of it. Well, a couple of days ago I figures the weather would be right to capture some nice images at sunrise and got up early to make the track there. But as is so often the case, the best lade plans develop a wrinkle. Southwest Washing and the Portland area experienced quite a warm summer and the Monday morning gave way to the first chilly sign of fall. With a temperature of 42 degrees both the Columbia and Cowlitz Rivers produced quite a heave fog cover that morning. Well, I considered, if I wasn't going to get a nice sunrise, maybe I can hang out and wait for the soft light of the sun shining through the brake up of the fog since the forecast was for clear skies and 73. Well, sunrise was around 7:00 am and I got to the barn around 6:40 and the sun finally broke through around 10:30 am, a long time to be patient. I must confess that around 9:00ish I got a little restless figuring the fog was never going to break and left the scene, only to return when I notices it was starting to break up.
What is also surprising is that once one gets out good things happen. The first was getting a chance to meet with the people who lived in the farm house and finding out that the barn is being taken down in a couple of months. While this is sad news for the barn and for this historic building, it was reassuring for me that I was there and that I had some time before this relic disappears. Washington State has a very active Historical Society with an aggressive barn preservation program that grants money to help keep these buildings alive. But it speaks to the changing needs or our society in that these barns are just not relevant or needed and regardless, are a burden to keep up and maintain. So, like many historical items it falls to photographers to document the changes we are experiencing and preserve, at least in images their lost place in our lives.
Below is a closeup of the faded logo on the barn. From the highway it looked like a long faded Chevy logo, but closeup, it was hard to figure out what was there. The second image is of a superimposed relatively old Chevy logo. Maybe, but I am not sure.
When I finally left this barn, it was around 11:30 am, long after I figured I would be back in Portland. So I figured I would stop a Mrs Beesley's Burgers, a popular burger stop for the last 40 years. Well inside of Mrs Beesley's was a painted picture of a round barn located in Castle Rock, that I was totally unaware of. So I looked it up and sure enough it was only about 6 miles to the south, right on my home. The barn is the old Laughlin Round Barn built in 1883 and is an example of the preservation work of Washington State.
