As you approach from north of the Timber & Stone property, you first see a faded red horse shelter in an open green meadow, then a quaint stone wishing well, and then a large stone and timber, rusted tin-roofed structure set up a hill from the road. This feat of human ingenuity and engineering inspired our Timber & Stone name.
From what we have gathered (more on that later), this is a barn built before 1925 by homesteaders George and Florence (Reynolds) Wright. (More on them later too.)
The external lower walls of the 24′ x 36′ structure are about 8-feet high at their highest and made of two vertical layers of local, stacked stone pulled directly from the ground around here and mortared with mud. I’m guessing gray limestone and tan to pink sandstone that you see as you walk back through the property and on your drive through the mountains. The back wall is set neatly into the hillside.
These walls are topped by stacks of five 36- and 24-foot-long axe-hewn timbers cut from the property to create a loft area and roof. You can see the axe marks that roughly squared the logs and created the notches that stack the beams Lincoln Log style. From our own investigation and that of a local barn wood reclaimer, no metal was driven in to these joints to keep the logs in place.
Stepping carefully inside, ( very carefully!) you find a space with four interior rooms, separated by roughhewn planks. The first-floor ceiling/loft floor is constructed with timber vigas and more roughhewn planks of wood. The floor is packed dirt. There is old straw on the floor beneath some wooden pallets and it has a faint smell of sheep or horses. (Current residents spotted inside include a really weird triangle shaped yellowish brown spider, a lizard, and a rat.) There’s an old shovel head, a chandelier, three hub caps, a ski boot, a dented blue metal tool box with random screws, a white baseball cap with ironed on blue letters – a doctor’s name.
The back room doesn’t have an outer side wall, it’s almost like a garage. It is lined on the interior side with tin. I think it was a pen for sheep that once had a gate or rails so that you could let them out to graze and keep them inside at night. The room next to this one has tight wire mesh where the stone walls meet the timbers.
Maybe keeping varmints out of a rabbit hutch? No roosting boxes for chickens are apparent but maybe they got removed at some point.
Access to the loft is in the front room via a handmade wooden ladder through a passage in the ceiling. Literal tree trunks at either end support the roof of corrugated tin panels – we’ve been told the rust indicates they are pre-WWII tin. Nailed to the loft wall is a plank with hand carved wooden pegs inserted to create a rack to hold ropes or tools or equipment of some kind. It’s not safe to walk up here, you might end up making a fast decent through the floor. The rafters are milled and we’ve been told there was a saw mill in the area in those early days. There’s a great view from up here.
Back on the first floor, there are two window spaces covered by wood planks. An electric line runs from a pole at the corner of the barn to a single light fixture in the barn. AI told me the electric equipment in the picture I showed it dated to the 1940s. Checks out, as George and Florence granted an easement to the electric company in 1941.
On to the front door way. It has completely collapsed. The handmade door with rusted iron hinges and a draft horse shoe attached to it with a square head nail is twisted amid the stone rubble of about half the front wall. Really not sure how the whole thing is mostly still standing.
It is amazing and beautiful. Crafted by hand from the land around it. But it has deteriorated to a level that is unsafe. Something must be done. We’d love to save it but can we afford to? Or will the elements get to it before we can?
Timber & Stone 
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