Gothic-arch barn

Also, in the United States, as settlement moved westward into areas without large stands of hardwood trees, such material became very expensive.

Advancing framing techniques for trusses made of dimensional lumber led to the gambrel roof, which was strong and free of heavy timbers.

The ability to create curved laminated rafters meant that the gambrel roof evolved into the more modern Gothic-arch barn.

"[6] The barns became popular in the Midwestern United States in the early 1900s, and even more so in the 1910s as advances in the lamination process allowed larger rafters to be fabricated.

The Gothic-arch design was featured on both the front and back cover of The Book of Barns - Honor-Bilt-Already Cut[a] catalog published by Sears Roebuck in 1918.

[8] Rafters were first constructed by laminating together, by nailing, two or more pieces of 1x8 inch lumber with overlapping end joints and then cutting the desired radius.

[5] Later arched rafters were formed without nails or bolts; the multiple layers were glued together with a waterproof casein glue under pressure.

[10] Rilco produced Gothic-arches for farm buildings advertised as “factory-fabricated and engineered”, and were sold in lumber yards in standard sizes for 30–40-foot (9.1–12.2 m) wide barns.

The Tomlinson Lumber Co sold pre-cut materials for a 34 by 50 feet (10 m × 15 m) dairy barn with a Gothic-arched roof supported by three-ply rafters in 1958 throughout Minnesota.

[5] Although the technique was generally outdated at the time, a guide to making a Gothic-arch truss cut from straight 1x8 was published by the USDA Forest Products Lab in 1958.

[11] A late 1930s government program in northern Idaho relocated destitute farmers that had originally homesteaded on marginally productive land.