Rock Barn

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Wheeler County, there stands a barn. Not just any barn, mind you.

A rock barn. And if these walls could talk, they'd have a story going back to 1891. That's when a rancher by the name of F.

M. Patton built the thing, and he didn't build it small or cheap. He went straight to the land itself for his materials, cutting native stone and framing it up with cottonwood.

Now here's the part that makes you stop and think. Part of the lumber that went into this barn came from Fort Elliott. An abandoned fort.

Somebody looked at what the frontier had left behind and said, well, that wood is still good wood. And into the barn it went. When Patton put up that barn, it was one of the first in the entire county.

One of the first. Wheeler County was still new country, still figuring itself out, and here was this solid, stone-walled structure going up to store prairie hay and alfalfa. The kind of building that says somebody intends to stay.

The years rolled on, as they do out on the Texas Panhandle, and in 1901 the W. G. Stiles family purchased the ranch and became the barn's new keepers.

Some buildings just outlast the reasons people said they couldn't be built. This rock barn, native stone and salvaged timber and all, is still standing there in Wheeler County to prove the point.

What the marker says

Built 1891 by F. M. Patton, a rancher; native stone with cottonwood framing. Part of lumber came from abandoned Fort Elliott. Barn was one of first in county; used to store prairie hay, alfalfa. W. G. Stiles family, owners, purchased ranch in 1901. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967