This tobacco barn is located on the farm adjoining my family’s farm and my father remembers working in the packhouse across Evergreen Road when he was a boy. Tobacco was a labor intensive crop that required lots of hands and skilled workers who knew how to navigate the steps and who could stand the hot sticky atmosphere of the barns.
This replaces a post originally published on 19 December 2008.
This tobacco barn is located near Rhine. It’s wrapped in false brick siding, as was common, and the shed roof has collapsed (also common). I’ve passed this place many times before and somehow never noticed the barn. I’ll always turn around for a tobacco barn, and as I’ve detailed before, they have gotten rarer with each passing year. They really are important landmarks as they represent a vanished sector of the economy in Georgia from at least the 1930s until the 1970s.
This tobacco barn is likely of 1950s or 1960s vintage, when cinderblock was replacing wood as the preferred building material for such structures. I’ve been documenting tobacco barns for over 20 years and they get harder to find with each passing year. This example actually has a new shed roof, and the cows are surely appreciating the shade it provides.
It’s located in the Center community. It’s on the map, but the name is so common that it’s not practical to identify it as such on the internet. However, if you ask anyone in Toombs County where Center is located, they should be able to point you in the right direction.
As I’ve discussed extensively over the years, the Irwinville Farms Project was one of numerous resettlement communities overseen during the Great Depression by the Farm Security Administration and the Resettlement Administration, as a means of helping rural communities much in need of outside assistance. Even though they are highly endangered, the structures related to this project are still well represented in the Irwinville area and are an invaluable resource that deserve documentation. The barns were all originally painted white but have faded in the nearly 90 years since they were built. They cost less than $200 to build and were considered very efficient. A testament to their quality is the fact that so many are still standing.
This is located in the Pine Valley community.
Tobacco barns have become quite rare and log versions are perhaps the rarest of these. The logs don’t necessarily mean they’re any older than other barns but are reflective of historic carpentry skills brought over by ancestors. I’ve documented other log barns dating from the 1920s-1950s.
This tile tobacco barn is one of three tobacco barns I found today. All of these barns are amazing survivors.
This photograph dates to 2008. I’m unsure as to the fate of this barn.
As many of you may know, I’m re-editing the entire website, and I’m discovering a lot of unpublished photographs. I photographed this barn, located between Alapaha and Ray City, in 2008. I don’t know if it’s still standing.
This tobacco barn has been put into use beyond its original purpose. The photo dates to 2010.