Huge Round Barn in Oregon

I was delving around in the photo files from our book Home Work, published in 2004. This is the so-called round barn, built by cattleman Peter French and what is now in the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon.

In 1872, French set out for Oregon from Sacramento, California with 1200 head of select shorthorn cattle, six Mexican vaqueros, and a Chinese cook.

He drove the cattle across the Sacramento River and then northward up into Eastern Oregon, where he settled on the west side of Steens Mountains.

Over the years, his ranching Empire grew to encompass 200,000 acres and 45,000 head of cattle, one of the largest cattle empires west of the Rockies.

In the late ’70s or early ’80s, French built three round barns for breaking horses in the winter months. This one is 100 feet in diameter, the conical roof framed with a 35-foot center pole of Juniper (about 40” diameter at the bottom, tapering to maybe 28” at the top), 14 surrounding Juniper posts and then a third wall of posts at the perimeter about 8 feet high.

This configuration provided an unbroken interior circular ring inside the barn so horses could run around and get exercise during severe weather.

He built three such barns, with this one being preserved.

It’s a breathtaking building; I spent a couple of hours there in Spring, 2003, shooting photos.

Barns are my cathedrals.

It’s a great story, with 7 more photos, told on pages 206 to 207 of Home Work.

I did over 5000 blog posts back in the day. Every once in a while I’ll drag something over to Substack, like this one.