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State’s largest round barn seeks a new purpose in Red Cloud
by Jennifer Chick

Preserving history isn’t about the bottom line. It’s about ensuring that artifacts will be here to educate and entertain the next generations.

That’s why Liz Rasser, her husband, Ron, and her son, Cal, with his wife, Stacy, are renovating the Starke Round Barn near Red Cloud.

“I think it’s just a matter of feeling like our family has cared for it, and it would really be a shame if all that it represents was just let go,” Liz said. “Because it represents people coming out here and building something in the community, kind of a conquering-the-elements-type thing. There’s too many of them that just fall in.”

It’s the state’s largest round barn, and one of the largest in the nation. But even more important than the building itself are the stories surrounding the unique building.

A Cather connection

Red Cloud is the childhood home of writer Willa Cather. The Starke Round Barn was built and completed during the time that Cather frequently visited Red Cloud. Although it’s hard to pinpoint exactly, Liz speculates that the Starke family and the round barn were featured in one of Cather’s stories, “The Bohemian Girl,” where a barn dance is held to celebrate the completion of the largest barn in the county.

“It’s something really interesting to speculate on,” Liz said. “It’s one of those deals where you can’t prove it isn’t true.”

For the last two years during the annual Willa Cather Spring Conference, Liz has hosted a meal in the long shed next to the Starke barn. Visitors are treated to stories about the barn and delve into research linking the barn to Cather’s writings. The Rassers have renovated the long shed to serve as a small museum dedicated to the barn, with displays showing various historic photos and documents from the barn’s heyday. Some of the papers are signed by Cather’s father, Charles, who owned a real estate, insurance, and loan office in Red Cloud.

A story here, a story there

“What I find is that as people go through it, depending on their background, if you tell them a story here or a little story there, then they’ll tell you a story about where they were when they were growing up on their grandparents’ farm, and you get a lot of interesting barn stories,” Liz said.

The Starke Round Barn was built in 1902 by four colorful Starke brothers, Conrad, Ernest, William and Christopher. The barn has three levels with a brick silo in the middle. The unique framework of the barn is held together with stress and tension, not nails or pegs.

Round barns were popular at the time that the Starke Round Barn was built. There are a couple of theories for the unique shape. One suggests that Quakers built round barns because there would be no corners where evil spirits could hide. But Liz leans towards another theory.

“Right about the time this barn was built, there were a lot of interesting round barns,” she said, “because for the same amount of money on materials, you could get more square footage if you built a round barn.”

A fortune lost

The story, as handed down through the generations to Ron’s family, cousins of the Starkes and the fourth generation to own the barn, is that the Starke brothers came to Red Cloud with a significant amount of money from their father, who was prominent in the Great Lakes Region.

“They sold out their father’s tugboat business and came out here with $1 million and started spending, and spending, and spending,” Cal said. “And when the Thirties hit, they didn’t have enough left in their tank.”

Rumors have it that the men might have been sent to south central Nebraska to stay out of trouble. No matter the reason, they bought a ranch near Red Cloud in the 1880s and built the 130-foot diameter barn. They were popular characters in the area and known by everyone.

“Everybody wanted to come out and work for them because they would just go sit under a shade tree and drink out of a cider jug all afternoon,” Liz said with a laugh.

The barn was wired for electricity in the early 1900s, and the family had a generator that supplied the electricity. In 1915, the Starke brothers started a dairy operation, with approximately 75 stanchions on the bottom level of the barn. In 1922, the Starkes had Nebraska’s best producing cow in milk and butter.

The barn has survived two tornadoes and escaped nearby fires, but when the Starke’s dairy herd contracted tuberculosis, the Starke brothers could no longer make a living. Two of the Starke brothers left town and died of heart attacks before the barn was sold. The remaining brothers moved to town and lost the barn in a foreclosure sale on the steps of the Webster County Courthouse. The Rassers, who were nephews of the Starkes, bought the barn at the foreclosure sale in 1929.

A new purpose

Now, since the barn has no useful purpose in the farming operation — the Rassers quit using it in the mid-1980s — the family is investigating what the barn’s new purpose will be. Liz has been researching grants to help pay to fix the roof and would like to reinvent the barn as a tourist attraction, with tours and special events. The barn has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since April 1972.

“That’s what happens to most of them,” she said. “They just have no useful purpose. If we were by Lincoln or Omaha, all we would have to do is put in a restaurant and we would have it made,” she said.

They recently received a $25,000 Joint Opportunities for Building Success grant through Peoples-Webster County Bank of Red Cloud and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Topeka, Kan. The grant will be used for improvements to the barn. First priority is a new roof for the barn.  The JOBS program is an economic development initiative that assists members in promoting employment growth in their communities. 

For the last three years, the Rassers have hosted a festival in late summer with food, farming and baking demonstrations, and live entertainment. This year’s barnfest, held in August, brought out more than 400 visitors to churn butter, press cider, watch a tractor pull, and listen to a bluegrass band.

“We’ve made a lot of progress but we’ve still got a long, long way to go,” Liz said. “If nothing else, we’re raising awareness.”

For more information, visit the Starke Round Barn website at starkeroundbarn.com or email Liz at lrasser@gmail.com.

Jennifer Chick is a regional reporter for the Kearney Hub and takes on freelance assignments for a variety of clients. She is a native of western Kansas, now living with her husband and two young children in Holdrege, Nebraska. You can contact her via email at tjchick@q.com.

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