The Barn on the Hill

WYANET — The “Barn on the Hill” was often photographed with its picturesque setting along Interstate 80 just north of Wyanet.

It was a landmark near the 47-mile marker that frequent travelers looked for along their way.

Sadly, the iconic I-80 barn took a direct hit from the Aug. 10 derecho, buckling its once graceful walls. By the end of the month, the owners of the barn, took the old glory down for good, leaving only memories behind and countless of photographs.

Loren Bird of Ladd, who drives a truck back and forth to the Quad Cities every day, said his trip is just not the same without the landmark fixture.

“I miss it. I would imagine a lot of people who travel that road miss it,” Bird said. “That big storm we had put a beating on it. I looked driving by one day, and said, ‘Boy, that barn don’t look right.’ Kind of buckled in the center. That wind pushed it out about 4 or 5 feet on the east side.

“It was a landmark you could consider your halfway point if you were heading to Chicago from the Quad Cities, or you might say, ‘We just passed the barn. We have a half hour to go.’ It’s going to be missed.”

Bird said the “Barn on the Hill” meant a lot of things to a lot of people.

“That barn is to Bureau County what the Red Covered Bridge is to Princeton,” he said. “In my mind, it was the old plains farmer. A farm with a horse, a farm with mules. That’s what it meant to me. It’s sad it’s gone.”

According to Jean (Peterson) Fox of Wyanet, whose family owned the farm from 1919 until the mid-60s, the barn was built in 1947 by her grandfather, Elmer Peterson.

“There’s been a lot of debate about how old the barn is since it looks so old,” she said. “It looked like an old barn even when we lived there. I have heard the story that the barn would not hold paint as it had been built with ‘green’ lumber. I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

Fox’s grandparents, Elmer and Lena Peterson, bought the property in 1919, but didn’t live there, rather renting it out to a tenant farmer. The Petersons and the farmer shared the expenses and income 50/50, Fox said, which was common in that time.

Fox said that the late Frank Yohn shared a story about working on the farm for her uncle, Ronald Peterson.

“When that barn got built, Ronald wanted to push some gravel up around the building so the hogs and cattle wouldn’t rub the foundation in. Frank said he was so afraid that he would hit the foundation with that old tractor and bucket,” Fox said.

The farm holds special memories for Fox. She lived there with her late husband, Roger, and their three children from 1959 to 1964 until it was sold to Paul Nordstrom of Wyanet after both of her grandparents passed away. She believes they were the last to live in the farm house as it was torn down shortly after the Petersons sold the farm to the Nordstroms.

“The children were really little there. We brought our youngest daughter, Danaille, home from the hospital after she was born,” Fox said. “Debbie was not quite 2 and Diana not quite 1 when we moved there on March 1st of 1959. It was a good place for us.”

Fox said she never dreamed the barn would become so famous thanks to I-80 which was completed after they left the farm, drawing the eyes of thousands of travelers and many photographers for decades.

To them, it was their homestead and place of work.

“We used the barn during the years we lived there. Roger never missed a milking in that barn, day and night. Every day for five years. That was our income,” she said.

If those walls could talk, Fox said they’d have a lot of stories to share.

Bird said he would often see photographers stop alongside the road with tripods to capture pictures of the iconic barn. Mike Vaughn, who has shot photos for the BCR, is one of many photographers drawn to the barn. He said it was a natural attraction.

“It was so old and weathered and sitting on top of this hill,” Vaughn said. “There might be a blue sky with puffy clouds or there might be a storm passing by and a dark background. It just had character and there wasn’t a whole of other distracting things sitting around. There used to be a windmill sitting next to it that balanced it out.

“It was just a clean picture of a cool old barn.”

Bird believes the windmill at the barn went down about 12 or 13 years ago.