Ohio Bicentennial Barn

In celebration of the bi-centennial of the state of Ohio in 2003, a young man by the name of Scott Hagan was hired to paint this large logo on the side of a barn in each of Ohio's 88 counties, celebrating 200 years of statehood. On our road trip from northeast to southwest Ohio today, we passed two of these barns. The one pictured in today's blip, located in Delaware County in central Ohio, is the 26th barn he painted. According to the story that I read online while researching this barn, he now calls himself the "barn painter," and his work on this Ohio barn project was a career changer for him. You can read about it here. Now my goal is to track down and photograph more of these barns. They are an amazing example of homespun history that saved the state a considerable amount of money because it was less costly to paint the logo on existing barns than to rent one of those huge roadside billboards for a month. And many of the barn signs are still there, whereas the roadside billboard would be long gone. I don't know who originated the idea to paint the barns, but it was a bit of advertising genius!

P.S. I wish the picture were sharper, but it's a drive-by shooting with my iPhone 4s as we flew by at about 65 mph. I was holding the phone, not doing the driving.