In Kentucky, part of the 'cultural landscape' is in peril

The sun rose near a tobacco barn in the Jessamine County community of Pink, which was named for the first postmaster, James Pink Overstreet. The head of the Kentucky Heritage Council said old barns are disappearing from the countryside "at an alarming rate." CHARLESBERTRAMLexingtonHerald-Leader|BuyPhoto

Kentucky has more old barns those built before 1960 per square mile than any other state.

Craig Potts, executive director of the Kentucky Heritage Council, said the number comes from a 2007 U.S. Department of Agriculture census. Kentucky is ahead of Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

Many of those are tobacco barns, which Potts said are iconic.

"They are very, very important cultural landscape features," Potts said. "We do see them being lost at an alarming rate. They are like any historic outbuildings. ... If they're not maintained regularly, they're going to fall into disrepair."

A rural resource survey on the heritage council's website catalogs some of the rural structures throughout Central Kentucky.

The study found that, although rural houses were taken care of because they continued to be family homes, outbuildings were often left to decay.

It appears that there are no formalized statewide efforts to preserve Kentucky's barns. Saving them is left to individual owners.

Potts said he attended a concert in a re-purposed tobacco barn now being used for gathering at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Mercer County.

Such public uses for tobacco barns are not unusual, even when the barns were still being used in-season for tobacco, Potts said, because of their wide-open interior spaces.

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In Kentucky, part of the 'cultural landscape' is in peril