February 22, 2024 Vol. 24, No. 40
In This Issue FOUR SEASONS
Round Barn work Famed landmark gets Some stylish upgrades
Four Seasons, by Kevin Box, in real life is located in front of the Center for Transformative Learning on the UCO campus, but this week is hidden somewhere in our paper. Email contest@edmondpaper.com with the correct location to be entered in the weekly drawing. For more information, see page 4.
City to start fees April 1 on EV chargers See Page 11
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23 Mostly Sunny High 64° Low 41°
PHOTOS PROVIDED
The Round Barn is located six miles east of Interstate 35 on Historic Route 66 and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free to the museum and live music events, but donations are accepted for the upkeep of the barn. By Richard Stephens Jr. Workers replaced Arcadia’s famed Round Barn’s lowest nine feet of wood siding around its entire circumference between Dec. 2023 and Feb. 2024, then repainted it to the roof. Dana Holman, whose company, Holman Construction, is the primary contractor, estimated the repair would add another 30 years of life to the 1898 landmark which sits on Route 66 and receives 40,000 visitors a year.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 Mostly Sunny High 69° Low 53°
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 Partly Cloudy High 74° Low 57°
PHOTOS PROVIDED
James Scott (left) and Dana Holman (right) re-panel the Round Barn in Arcadia in Dec 2023. Work completed on Feb 9, 2024.
Grant request Repairs cost $110,100. A costshare grant from the National Park Service’s (NPS) Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program given in June 2023 provided $30,000 and the Arcadia Historical and Preservation Society is contributing the rest. Ann Young, its President and grant writer, proudly stated, “We got the only one that was awarded within the state of Oklahoma.” Curved siding Just like William Odor and his crew did in 1898 to build the barn and Luke Robison and the “Overthe-Hill Gang” did between 19881992 to completely rebuild it, the planks were bent to accommodate the barn’s round shape. This time, however, the method changed. Starting early December, Holman and James Scott, the primary carpenters, removed two rows of rotting and warped side boards at a time and replaced them with new ones. Tarps covered any missing boards at night to keep rain and wind from coming inside. Holman explained how the boards were bent. “So, I come up with
the idea of steaming the wood and did some studying up on it…I built a steam box. It was 17-foot long ‘cause our material was a little over 16 [feet]. I have four steamers running on it and it runs about 200 degrees…we could put about six to seven pieces of siding in there at one time…”
PHOTOS PROVIDED
Seventeen-foot long box with four steamers that made the yellow pine bendable for Arcadia’s Round Barn re-siding project between Nov 23 - Feb 24. The boards would steam for about an hour, be removed, and according to Dustin Ward, a volunteer who watched the process, “they would continued on Page 3