By RANDY GONZALES
Special to Hays Post
There are big barns, and then there is the Cooper Barn.
The huge white structure boldly towers above the horizon just off Interstate 70’s Exit 54 at Colby. And it’s a must-see for travelers about midway between the city of Hays, the economic hub of northwest Kansas, and the Colorado state border.
The 150-ton barn, deemed one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas Architecture, boasts of being the biggest one in the state with its massive measurements of 66 feet wide, 114 feet long and 48 feet high.
Built in 1936 at Breton, 16 miles northeast of Colby, the barn was donated to the Thomas County Historical Society by the Cooper family and moved to its current location in 1992.
The Prairie Museum of Art and History notes that more than 100 years of history, artifacts, exhibits and photos are on display inside the two-story barn in Colby, which features an expansive haymow upstairs.
The Cooper Barn and several other vintage buildings on the grounds of the Prairie Museum can take visitors back in what most would probably call a slower time in history.
The barn itself offers a lesson in history, with posters lining the outer walls that explain various cattle brands and the evolution of farming practices over the decades. Also on the bottom floor, one can view a covered wagon and a 1930s-era red Chevrolet pickup truck, dating back to the time the barn was built.
Visitors climbing the stairs to the second floor often are in awe as they gaze toward the trusses that span the width of the structure.
The hayloft has played host to numerous weddings, reunions and other activities through the years. There was a wedding there just last month.
It was also popular back in the day, too. Connie Smith Davis remembers that when she was a student at Colby Community College, in January 1967, the Economics club held a party in the hayloft. Chili was made, but it did not warm up the students.
“The weather was extremely cold and snowy, so despite the hot chili and some portable heaters in that large hay mow, we were all very cold and we all went home early,” Davis said.
Building and moving the barn
Foster Farms built the barn nearly 90 years ago to hold its herd of prize-winning cattle.
In the 1960s, the barn was sold to a partnership known as O.C.K. Farms. The partnership dissolved in 1969 and Willard Cooper retained ownership of the company. The barn was used for the community college’s horse production program in the 1970s.
Jim Malcolm, who grew up in Almena but has been a Colby resident since 1970, remembered attending a livestock judging contest at Cooper Barn while in high school in the mid-1950s. When he was a high school teacher in Colby, Malcolm had his physics class watch the barn move to Colby.
“The first time I saw this barn, I was awed,” said Malcom, the current president of the board for the museum. “I thought, ‘Gee whiz, that’s some barn.’ It was the biggest barn I had ever seen.”
Bruce Frahm, a Colby native who graduated from high school there in 1970, remembered being in a livestock judging contest at the barn when he was an underclassman. He took note of the building material, which was made of the finest quality of wood.
The barn was built using lumber from Foster Lumber Company, and house siding was used on the outside instead of barn siding to give it a more attractive appearance.
The lumber company’s owner had the barn built to house a nationally known herd of registered Hereford cattle; at one time, the herd consisted of 731 animals, according to The Fence Post News, an agricultural digital newspaper.
Frahm also was part of the caravan that moved the barn to the museum grounds. Hydraulic lifts raised the barn, and eight-wheel dollies were put in place in preparation for the move.
“There must have been four or five police cars along with the moving truck,” Frahm said. “At certain points there were fairly good-sized crowds. They had to cut out small panels in the side of the barn to run big I-beams through it to support it.”
In 1991, the barn was donated to the local historical society by Gary and Elfriede Cooper and Mary Jo Cooper Pawlus. In May of 1992, the barn was moved to the museum in a three-day trek from Breton to Colby.
The biggest barn?
Frahm said the Cooper Barn had a rival for being billed as the largest barn in Kansas. He said a barn in Rooks County also claimed the title. The Thomas Big Barn, built in 1912 between Woodston and Alton, was 100 feet long, 64 feet wide and 54 feet tall.
“Turns out we both were right,” Frahm said. “We have the biggest cubic footage barn and the other barn had the biggest square footage barn.”
Frahm added that since the other barn was struck by lightning and burned, Cooper Barn has ever since can lay claim to the title all by itself.
Other museum attractions
The Eller House features vintage furniture depicting a 1930s homestead.
The old white Nicol School is complete with a wood-burning stove and desks common to one-room schoolhouses. Step outside the school, and one can imagine the laughter of children as they literally flew down the slippery slide and squeals from girls wanting off the moving-too-fast merry-go-round.
One can sit in a pew in the Lone State Church, built in 1915 north of Gem by a group of Danish settlers, and almost hear the preacher giving a Sunday morning message.
The grounds also include the Vacin red barn, built in 1916, and the Western Prairie Educational Site, located on 10 acres south of the museum and providing a natural habitat for wildlife.
“In my opinion, all of these buildings need to be maintained for people here now who have never seen them,” Malcolm said.
The 21,500 square-foot museum features numerous exhibits and artifacts. An earth berm planted with native buffalo grass encircles the building. The museum at 1905 S. Franklin Ave. is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Jim Severs and his wife, Jan, visited the Cooper Barn and the other buildings one day last month. The couple from Conway, Arkansas, stopped in Colby a year ago and wanted to visit the museum, only to find it had closed for the day. They made sure to check out this time around on their way to Denver.
“It’s beautiful; I love the architecture,” Jim said of Cooper Barn. “The fact that it’s preserved is amazing. Since it’s billed as (one of the eight) architectural wonders of Kansas, I kind of had to see it.”
Jan Severs was impressed by the size of the hayloft.
“Upstairs, it was beautiful,” she said. “It was wonderful to see how people lived.”
Jan added that Arkansas has nothing like Cooper Barn.
“We have a lot of barns,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know of any this large.”
