Over the years, I’ve had the privilege to travel throughout the West and photograph a lot of weather-worn, stalwart individuals—and that includes some pretty cool barns.
Leave it to
horse people to walk into a dusty, non-climate-controlled building that houses
animals, breathe in the hay- and manure-scented air, and gaze upon the stall
fronts, rafters and tack room as if they’ve just set foot into some pristine,
historic cathedral. If owning horses was our religion, then the barn would be
our sanctuary.
Working for Western Horseman has taken me to
numerous ranches, training facilities and horse breeding operations, and the
start of each visit almost always begins at the barn. So many of those
structures leave quite an impression and practically demand to be photographed.
Here are some of my favorites.
The CA Ranch barn in Montana has wood siding, flooring and stall walls. It also has a classic gambrel roof, designed to create plenty of storage space in the loft and to shed snow.The barn on the ID Ranch in Wyoming has rock siding and multiple tiny openings along the top designed for homing pigeons. Before there were phones or Wifi signals, the ranch received its messages through its fleet of feathered couriers.The Four Sixes L Barn might be the most famous barn in our culture. Its monitor-style roofline can easily be seen from Highway 82 in Guthrie, Texas. Here, brothers Dusty (right) and True Burson start a colt at the ranch’s headquarters.Plenty of quality ranch horses have exchanged hands in this barn on Haythorn Land and Livestock. The ranch holds its production sales in this building with a gable roof and two cupolas. In August 2008, we ran an article about buckaroo Frank Dominguez starting colts for Calumet Farm in Kentucky. All of the barns there were magnificent, but I particularly liked the one with an indoor track around the stalls.Nebraska rancher Buck Buckles kept his draft horses in his red gambrel-roofed barn. After using his team to harvest hay or feed cows, he would remove their harnesses and they would walk into the barn by themselves.One of the barns on the Deseret Ranch in Florida reflects the climate in which it stands. Its open sides allow for plenty of air circulation during hot summer days, and large amount of wood boards used is understandable based on the excessive number of trees in the area.Bearing the ranch’s Twin V brand, the barn on the Saunders Ranch in Weatherford, Texas, was built about 100 years ago. It is featured on the cover of the March 2020 issue of Western Horseman. You don’t have to be a horse person to stare in awe at the interior design of the main barn on Wagonhound Land and Livestock in Wyoming.This barn on the former Polo Ranch in Oklahoma has brick siding. It is featured on the opening pages of “Horse Hubs,” an article about barn designs that appears in the March 2020 issue of Western Horseman.
