Seeing Red

Travelers along U.S. 40 near will notice a dramatic change at the Huddleston Farmhouse, just west of Cambridge City. Earlier this month, the property’s c.1841 bank barn got an entirely new look—a return to its original paint scheme  After decades sporting yellow and green paint, the 175-year-old barn now stands out in traditional red with white trim.

The Huddleston Farmhouse barn before its recent new paint job.

Indiana Landmarks owns the Huddleston property, which serves as our Eastern Regional Office, headquarters of the Indiana National Road Association, and a National Road Interpretive Center. Using a grant from the Efroymson Family Fund of the Central Indiana Community Foundation, we opted to return the Huddleston barn to its original color scheme to represent what the barn likely looked like when John and Susannah Huddleston operated an inn for travelers along the National Road in the 1840s.

The Huddlestons sold food and supplies, renting “travelers’ kitchens” in the basement of the house, and shelter for animals in the adjacent barn. Most of the 27 stalls in the basement of the barn were reserved for paying travelers’ tired draft animals.

A classic Indiana example of a traditional bank barn, the barn is built into the side of a hill and accessible on two levels. Wagons carrying hay and grain would have entered through the large doors on the upper level, reserved for processing grains and storing the hay, while the lower level housed animals, which entered through double-doors on the north side of the barn.

Indiana Landmarks acquired the Huddleston property in 1966 and restored the house and barn from 1979-1983. Today the farm offers visitors a glimpse of what life was like for John and Susannah Huddleston and their 11 children, as well as the travelers who crowded the porches and yard and rented the farmhouse’s two travelers’ kitchens for cooking and sleeping.

Huddleston Farmhouse in Cambridge City

On the accessible lower level of the farmhouse, National Road Heritage Site exhibits give modern-day travelers a picture of cross-country travel on the Historic National Road from Cumberland, Maryland to Vandalia, Illinois—from the pioneer era to the present.

Tours of the house and National Road Heritage Site are available by appointment. Historic spaces in the house and barn can be rented for weddings, meetings, dinners, and other events.