Marshfield's Round Barn on the Yellowstone Trail Multi-Cache
Marshfield's Round Barn on the Yellowstone Trail
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Marshfield is home to the World’s Largest Round Barn, a site just a few blocks south of the Yellowstone Trail. Travelers in the 1920s were provided camping sites on the fairgrounds, and there is still camping available there today.
The round barn is the home of the Central Wisconsin State Fair each summer, and was completed in 1916. It measures 150 feet in diameter and stands 70 feet high. Fitted with wooden bleachers and stanchions for 250 head of cattle, it was built to house purebred animals for both sales and shows.
Round barns were in vogue then - later, advances in automatic milking machines would replace the three-legged stool and make round barns inefficient - but even so the size and style of this barn stood out.
What makes this barn even more impressive is that it was built by hand, without scaffolding or visible support beams, by a band of barn builders who were also brothers. The contractor and designer was Frank A. Felhofer, and when construction began on Thanksgiving Day of 1915, his main crew consisted of brothers John, Fred and Henry. Other brothers Charles, William and Edward helped out when extra hands were needed.
The barn's builders had to cut the fingers out of their gloves so they could pound nails in shingles in the coldest months of winter. But the Felhofer boys knew what they were doing. They guestimated the two-story roof would require 190,000 shingles, and it finally took 188,000.
The ground floor featured two rings of stalls surrounding an open show ring. A second floor was completed in 1917, and during early fairs, it was used for small animals like chickens and rabbits. Today, the second floor is considered too unstable to be used but the ground floor, now renovated to accommodate more than 300 head of cattle, is still in use.
The Yellowstone Trail is not marked in the city of Marshfield, despite many historical buildings along its route. If you want to follow the trail, arrive from the east from Hewitt on the Yellowstone Road. Turn north on Galvin Street, just before Highway 13, which you want to avoid if interested in historical buildings, or which you want to take if wanting the straightest fastest route. From Galvin, turn west on 4th street, and since 4th street doesn’t go thru anymore, turn right on 8th street, and follow the signs that say “To 4th street. When you reach Vine street, turn NE, then NW on 2nd, NE on Central, then NW on Arnold, then NE on Chestnut, then NW on Blodgett, then north on St Joseph, then west on McMillian back to highway 13, which you can take north to Spencer and Colby.
This is one of several caches I have placed along the route of the historic Yellowstone Trail. The trail is a historic motor route that went across Wisconsin from 1918 to 1930. The Wisconsin portion of the Yellowstone Trail is 406 miles long, starting at the state line south of Kenosha and going north, and then west to Hudson. The Wisconsin segment is just a part of one of America’s first transcontinental auto routes, a 3,754-mile long road that started in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts and went to Puget Sound, Washington.
Before there were numbered highways in the United States there were names attached to roads to help motorists navigate from town to town or from county to county. Hailed as being “A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound,” the Yellowstone Trail began as a 25-mile stretch of road near Ipswitch, South Dakota. In October 1912, Mr. J. W. Parmley formed the Yellowstone Trail Association.
By 1917 the Yellowstone Trail had grown to become the main auto route for those travelling from the East Coast to Yellowstone National Park and the Pacific Northwest. While the Association did not build roads, it did lobby local governments in towns along the Trail to help promote the fledgling automobile tourism industry by building and maintaining “good roads.” Trail towns paid the Association a small fee or “assessment” to help cover advertising expenses and upkeep of the Trail.
More information on the Yellowstone Trail, including maps can be found at http://www.yellowstonetrail.org/id18.htm
The final cache is located in Wildwood Park. Best parking is at N44.38.940; W90.11.260.
The cache is located at N44.38.ABC; W90.11.DEF
A = The nearest street south of the barn – 10
B = The total number of legs on 3 milking stools
C = The third digit of the year the barn was completed + 4
D = The number of white doors on the north side of Pat’s Barn
E = The number of compass points given their own door on the World’s Largest Round Barn
F = The number of sides of the cupola on top of the World’s Largest Round Barn - 4.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
N ubyybj.
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures