It’s hard to describe this place until you’ve taken your shoes off and walked upon the soft dirt paths here.

There’s a natural sense of intimacy and family that old barns bring out in people – they feel connected to them somehow, even if they didn’t grow up on a farm, or in a rural community.

The Vigus family moved to the Columbia River Gorge from Kansas in 1909, in hopes of striking it rich during the agricultural boom that was taking place in the Northwest. The land was cleared by hand with neighbors pitching in to remove six foot wide fir trees, and the Tin Roof Barn was completed in 1915 after three years of labor. Their crops varied from alfalfa to strawberries to Christmas trees, and though the crops flourished, the boom was more of a bust. The family maintained their good spirits by joining in community gatherings that took place at the Husum Dance Hall located just a mile down the road. Families from all over the rural countryside would come to the hall to join with friends in dancing and to share homemade meals as well as catching up on all that was going on in their area. Refreshments were bootlegged in from The Dalles on boats that docked near Bingen, and then were loaded onto wagon teams who slogged through two feet of dust the nine miles to Husum. Morrel Vigus, one of the children who grew up on the farm, remembered that the drivers would “get all ‘beered’ up and let the horses bring ‘em back to the barn."