Red Barn - Brighton Reservation - Okeechobee, Florida, USA - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

The Red Barn is a historic barn located on the Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation in Glades County, Florida. It was built in 1941 with help from the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division to serve the Seminole cattle business. The barn measures 30 feet across by 64 feet long. It has a central bay area with a gabled roof and two bays on each side of it with shed style roofs. The central bay area has a hay loft above it with a central opening. The floor is dirt and the support structure sits on 8 inch concrete block footings.

The 23' tall Red Barn is clad in weathered wooden drop siding and roofed with wooden shingles. (Note: After Hurricane Wilma in 2005 the roof was repaired with corrugated metal to preserve the structure and prevent further damage. Since then it has been replaced with wooden shingles to match its original looks.)

Inside there are 8 horse stalls on the south side of the 10'- 2" central bay. These stalls measure 10 feet 2 inches in size. The north side of the central bay has one double sized horse stall, two storage rooms and four single wide horse stalls.

The construction of the barn helped mark the beginning of the modern Seminole Cattle industry. Many of the first Seminole cowboys kept their horses and saddles here and hay that was stored in the barn was used to feed those horses. After the Red Barn fell out of use as a horse barn it continued to be used as a social center for the Brighton community and as an informal setting for discussions among Seminoles about the creation of a federally recognized Tribal government in the 1950's. Today the Red Barn represents a powerful symbol of Tribal sovereignty as well as a surviving historical location. On December 24, 2008, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places and later in 2011 it was further listed on the Tribal Register of Historic Places.

Street address: Harney Pond Road/Red Barn Road Okeechobee , FL USA 34974 County / Borough / Parish: Glades Year listed: 2008 Historic (Areas of) Significance: State Periods of significance: 1941-1958 Historic function: Agricultural Outbuilding- Barn Current function: Vacant/ Not in use Privately owned?: no Primary Web Site: [Web Link] Secondary Website 1: [Web Link] Season start / Season finish: Not listed Hours of operation: Not listed Secondary Website 2: Not listed National Historic Landmark Link: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   03/14/2025 BoomersOTR visited it