What You Can Do
Give $11 to help support the 11 Most Endangered Places.
11 Most Endangered
Tobacco Barns of Southern Maryland
Year Listed: 2004
Location: Annapolis , Maryland
Current Status: Endangered
Threat: Development
Latest News
The preservation of this 11 Most site was supported by Save America's Treasures, a program that is facing elimination in the proposed federal budget. Join our campaign to save this component of preservation funding, which has restored 1,100 structures and collections and created 16,000 jobs coast to coast.
Significance
For almost 400 years, wood-frame tobacco barns have dotted the rolling fields of Southern Maryland, their shapes defining the character of the area's rural landscapes and their simple construction echoing traditional timber-framing methods used in England for centuries. Once essential to the process of air-curing tobacco, a mainstay crop of Maryland's agriculture since the 17th century, historic tobacco barns are now being lost at an alarming rate as the region's agricultural land is consumed by the spread of the D.C. metropolitan commuter-shed. Pressure from residential sprawl has only been aggravated by the unintended consequences of Maryland's 2001 "tobacco buy-out" state policy, which encouraged farmers to stop cultivating tobacco. Scores of tobacco barns now have no productive purpose, and stand unused and deteriorating.
Updates
Southern Maryland is rapidly changing, and residential subdivisions and shopping centers replace tobacco fields. Almost all of Maryland's approximately 1,000 tobacco farmers accepted a state-funded “buy-out” and no longer cultivate what was once Maryland's primary money crop, making hundreds of tobacco barns instantly obsolete. Unless viable alternative uses can be found, these modest landmarks will fall to development pressure, deferred maintenance, and weather. Fortunately, there is hope. The 11 Most Endangered listing and a coalition of preservation organizations helped persuade the Maryland General Assembly to create a new program to promote preservation of historic agricultural structures. In 2004, a summit hosted by the Southern Maryland Tobacco Barns coalition (led by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Preservation Maryland, the Maryland Historical Trust, with local organizations and agencies) brought together farmers, preservationists, and public officials to help develop preservation solutions for the barns. This work is ongoing. In the meantime, through a 2005 Save America’s Treasures grant and the coalition’s Tobacco Barn Restoration Fund, Preservation Maryland offers targeted small grants for barn restoration.
Share your memories of this endangered place
Submitted by Anne at: June 22, 2009
Melanie,we use to go there alot in the early 80's. Such a shame it is no longer there. The barn was fascinating to my husband,son and myself. Looking up you could see the rafters and feel like you had stepped back in time. So sad to hear it is gone...
Submitted by Melanie at: April 29, 2009
I miss the Tobacco Barn Antique Show in Upper Marlboro, MD. It was fun to roam through the tobacco barn while looking for treasures from an earlier era. It was the perfect setting. There is a gas station on the former location.