A Leelanau County barn was just named Michigan Barn of the Year by the Michigan Barn Preservation Network along with 5 others across the state.

Now the Brunson Barn, located within the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, joins the ranks of 90 barns in Michigan recognized for their "outstanding character, unique features or preservation efforts."

The circa 1900 structure is owned by the National Park Service and is part of the Port Oneida Rural Historic District, made up of the barns, farmhouses, granaries, milk houses and sugar shacks of 18 historic farmsteads. The barn on Thoreson Road, one mile west of M-22, is all that remains of the original Joseph and Margaret Brunson farm.

The Ticker spoke to Eric Winkelman of Glen Arbor Township, who was an early champion and steward of the Brunson Barn when it was on its last timbers, at the time he and wife Barb moved to Leelanau County.

“We’d pass the meadow regularly and watched its demise and decay, even chasing off poachers,” says Barb Winkelman. Eric’s advocacy led in part to the first major Park Service-led, volunteer-supported rehabilitation project on the barn in the late 1990s. Work on this barn and others has been ongoing, with Park Historical Architect Kimberly Mann leading yearly volunteer barn restoration workshops.

The Park Service, partnering with nonprofit groups Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear and Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes, continues to restore the over 360 historic farm buildings in Port Oneida.

“It is amazing to see the individual professional skills—design, carpentry, re-adaptation—of the volunteers and staff of the Park,” Eric Winkelman says.

Teams recently reinforced and upgraded the Brunson Barn's floor, and it currently serves as a working barn to store materials and supplies for other historic district rehabilitation projects. Notes Eric, “This barn that was saved is now helping save other structures throughout the National Park.”