Photo by avogadro(well)

About a month back, the Washington Post observes, Maryland’s “preservation elite” assembled for a summit at King’s Landing Park in Calvert County to talk about ongoing efforts to preserve and restore southern Maryland’s tobacco barns. These are highly romantic vernacular structures, some of them still in use today, whose prospects are dwindling as new development encroaches on the rural character of the area. Working farmers who no longer want them don’t care about them, and the communities in which they stand often lack the resources to sustain them.

Though the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Southern Maryland tobacco barns among the 11 most endangered historic sites back in 2004, the threat hasn’t diminished since. Sprawl from D.C. has only gotten sprawl-ier and the economy nose dived in 2006. Fortunately, no new problems have emerged that specifically affect the fate of the lonely tobacco barn — so tobacco barn enthusiasts still have their work cut out for them.

The best tool for preservationists, in this case, is tourism. Since the communities in southern Maryland aren’t dense enough to support aging tobacco barns directly, that money has to come from outside the community. The Maryland Historical Trust and the State Historic Preservation says that working farmers won’t work to preserve the barns, so presumably a lot of the interest must come from outside the community anyway.