The Yellow Barn in Conifer was nominated to Colorado’s Most Endangered Places List and designated in 2003 as a Jefferson County Landmark. The Jefferson County Historical Commission as part of its Landmark Designation Program lists the barn on the Jefferson County Register of Historic Places.  The barn strongly resembles, with only minor variations, the barn in Old Town Burlington on the plains of eastern Colorado.

The Yellow Barn was built in 1918 and today sports traces of yellow paint and the original red shake shingle roof.  Standing prominently at the corner of Jefferson County Highway 73 and Barclay Road, the Yellow Barn is a beloved community landmark and appreciated for its history and architectural grace.  The barn stands at the historic Bradford Junction, where by 1860, the Denver Bradford and Blue River Wagon Road joined the Mount Vernon, Blue River and Gregory Roads from Bergen Park and Evergreen on the way to today’s Conifer.  The road then and now continues further south and west to Leadville.  An article in the Jefferson County Historical Commission’s “Historically Jeffco”, in the winter of 1995 reported, “When toll roads joined there in 1860, it was called Bradford Junction,” named for Col. Robert Bradford who owned the property and 320 surrounding acres from 1860 to 1873.  In years following, the area was also know as Junction Ranch, Hutchinson, Hutchinson Bradford, and Conifer Ranch.

The first post office was established at this historic crossroads in May, 1865 as Hutchinson, a little more than 12 miles southwest of Morrison and six miles south of Evergreen.  The post office name was changed to Conifer in 1894.

The Civil War well, located on the property near the Yellow Barn was dug during the Civil War from 1861 to 1862.  The watering hole served as a popular stopping place on the toll road from Ken Caryl to Conifer and points west.

The first abstract of title was issued from the United States to Silas P. Elliott on October 20, 1873.  A warranty deed from Mr. Elliot to James McNasser was issued on February 16, 1874.  The Denver Dailey Times reported on September 27, 1878 that a fire on the site destroyed a hotel, tollgate and stagecoach station.  This same article acclaimed the crossroads as a “convenient stopping place for travelers on the principle route from Denver to Fairplay.”  The Junction House was rebuilt, but it is reported that owner, James McNasser, who was addicted to poker, had to sell all his holdings to pay off his gambling debts after losing heavily one night in 1878.  A warranty deed dated September 29, 1881 transferred the property to Evaline Homer.   Miss Homer ran the Junction as a general store and post office for many years.

During the next 37 years, the property was transferred numerous times.  On February 20, 1918 a warranty deed transferred 720 acres of the property, then know as the Junction Ranch, from Frederich Buechner to John J. Mullen.  An addition to the deed later included Jeanette E. Mullen, John’s wife and the J.K. Mullen Corporation.  John Mullen built the present three-story, 5,000 square-foot barn on the Junction Ranch Property in 1918.  Some of the original lumber reveals stamps, indicating that the barn, at
least partially, was constructed from a kit sold by Montgomery Ward and Company.  The barn with vaulted roof, reminiscent of Pennsylvania Dutch-style architecture, was built primarily to house Mullen’s show horses.  The main floor stabled horses, the basement stored horse-carts, and the top floor provided a hayloft when it was not being used for community dances.

Jack Antweiler, a youth at that time, recently recalled that Heini Livonius, the son of local pioneers, was one of the carpenters who built the barn.  Livonius served as postmaster “around 1916 or 1917, (although) his wife did most of the work,” chuckled Antweiler.  The Yellow Barn also served as a community-gathering place where dances were held every weekend during the summer months.  The hardwood floor of the hayloft “was ‘good and slick’ from the dust and stored hay (and) members of the community enjoyed waltzes, fox-trots, and square dancing,” remembers one old-timer.  People from the surrounding area including Richmond Hill and Pleasant Park attended the dances.  Box-lunch socials were also held in the barn, which further enamored the Yellow Barn to the community.  “A large Republican rally and dance was held at the barn in 1936 to garner support for Republican presidential candidate Alf M. Landon who was running against Franklin D. Roosevelt,” wrote Betty Moynihan in a 1997 narrative.

On April 1, 1942, the Mullen family sold the Yellow Barn property, which now included the main house, a caretaker’s house, a ‘milk-house’, and the barn, to J.H. Brubaker, who sold it to Justus and Hedwig Wilhelm and Ernst Kemnitz in 1946.  Edward and Lois Currier purchased 355 acres on June 13, 1955.  The Curriers sub-divided the land, selling both large and small acreage parcels, but keeping 25 acres between Highway 285 and Highway 73 for their children.  In 1971, the family donated the use of the barn to the first Conifer Hobby and Arts Fair.  On March 17, 1989, the Curriers sold 2.58 acres at 27051 Barclay Road, the present address of the Yellow Barn and the Civil War Well to Dale Davis.

By 1996 the current owner Corrine Meyers had the “Child Garden Leaning Center” placed near the site of the Yellow Barn.  In 2004, Ms. Meyers signed a letter of intent with the Conifer Area Chamber of Commerce stating she will donate the barn to the Conifer Area Chamber of Commerce if it can purchase the land on which it sits within a year of price being set.  The owner will also provide conservation provisions for the Civil War Well.  Still standing on the property is the farm/ranch house and a caretaker’s building originally built by John Mullen in 1918.
The Yellow Barn is significant, according to the National Register of Historic Places, because it embodies distinctive characteristics of a period and method of construction in association with Criterion C.  In the sense stated by Randy Leffingwell, the Yellow Barn was constructed as a reflection of many farming cultures in the Midwest of the 19th and 20th century, “Just as every barn builder who had come before him, John Brooks took what was in his mind and memory and added to that what was in books and history.  All this modified to his needs.”

The Yellow Barn embodies the elements of various previous styles including:

• An earthen ramp leading to double doorways of the main floor as shown in an historic photo, and openings along the long wall from the ground floor toward lower open space, thus suggesting a bank barn, the accepted design for storage of hay and grain.  Bank barns were built as “high bridges or ramps, i.e. ‘banks’ to provide wagon access to the upper floor of a barn.”
• A sliding gable-end double doorways reminiscent of New England barns and flanked by one window on each side.
• A red balloon frame, clear-span Gothic arch truss roof.
• A very small roof overhang similar to those found

in Dutch barns.

• A full-length basement floor, which contains stalls originally used to house Mr. Mullen’s show horses.  There are two openings on each side of the opposite long wall surrounding four windows.
•  A red roof and yellow exterior walls, according to the style of the period.

The Significance Designation Criteria for the Jefferson County Landmark Program are:

1. The building possesses special historic, architectural, cultural, and social significance as part of the heritage of Jefferson County.
2. The building represents distinctive characteristics of a period type of construction, and,

7. The building is significant as the only or one of a few remaining examples of an architectural style or use, or it represents historically or culturally a style of life in the past.  Examples include a stagecoach stop and/or buildings, or a one-room, rural schoolhouse.
8. The building is associated with an antiquated use resulting from technological or social change.  Examples include mining, bridges, wagon or stagecoach roads, railway beds, hitching posts, etc.

As a community landmark, the Yellow Barn represents the strong, independent spirit of the mountain residents.  It stands as a testament to the enduring nature of many generations of the past and of generations to come.  Initial plans for renovation of the Yellow Barn would reclaim this structure as a meeting place for the community and Conifer Area Chamber of Commerce, as well as provide a museum, gallery and retail space, and offices.