TP Bowlby Barn, Circa 1912
Buhl, Twin Falls County
- Grant: 2024 – Reroofing the southern exanse
Location: 1744 East 4300 North, Buhl, Idaho 83316
Built around 1912 during a period of accelerated settlement and with great changes to the dairy industry, the T. P. Bowlby Barn is a rectangular, two-story, balloon frame structure with a gambrel roof and 13-1/2 foot concrete walls. Its proportions are 70 feet wide, 110 feet long, and approximately 45 feet tall. The shingled gambrel roof extends down ward to the edge of the concrete walls which extend one foot higher than the first floor of the barn. Twenty iron stanchions facing inwardly are in the southeast corner of the barn on a concrete floor, with a milk room right beside them, as well as stalls for ten horses are in the northwest corner. Hay was unloaded at the east end of the barn and lifted to the second floor by the use of slings and pulley until the 1950’s when a ramp was added so that machinery could be stored in the loft.
T. P. Bowlby was a dairy farmer from Tillamook who moved to Buhl in 1911-12 and became Involved with the beginnings of the dairy industry there. He took his milk to Gustave Kunze’s cheese factory. Longtime residents of the area reported that Henry Schick, who helped to build the Gustave Kunze barn, was involved in the building of the Bowlby barn, leading to many similarities between the two structures.
The T. P. Bowlby Barn is an excellent extant example of an early multi-use barn with a focus on dairy needs. It is also an early example of the use of cold-poured concrete in the construction of farm outbuildings, which reflects a transitional period between the traditional methods of constructing a barn and plan book methods that would homogenize such constructions shortly afterward. However, the partial post-and-lintel system used to frame the roof is a very early style used in framing a gambrel-roofed barn the use of diagonal framing reflects an advancement in building techniques. The concrete foundation was implemented by Kunze shortly before, and it appears that Bowlby was following his lead, though the addition of the short concrete walls to provide further support to the structure seems to be of his own design.
Locally, it is a reference point due to its size and bright white color. It can be seen from up to 1 1/2 miles approaching from the south, one mile from the west and 1 1/2 miles from the north. In the early 1980’s, this and six other barns within a 4 1/2 mile distance were added to the National Register of Historic Places, though this is one of only four that remain today. It is the second largest (beat out by a mere 10 feet in length) agricultural building from Twin Falls in the National Register. It stands in testament for agriculture to the most successful Carey Act settlement in the United States — and a significant monument to the most successful privately owned canal system in the west — the Twin Falls Canal Company.
