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This historical marker states: During a round barn building boom in South Dakota, Alfred and Marit Christensen, together with relatives and neighbors, built a round dairy barn one-third mile northeast of this marker. Forty round barns were built in the state between 1903 and 1921.
Workers fabricated hundreds of concrete blocks using sand and clay from deposits found on the farmstead. Special forms made blocks that resembled hand-quarried stone. First, an interior silo was built. Then the concrete block walls of the round barn were erected to surround the
silo. A self-supporting, dome-shaped, two-pitch gambrel roof topped the barn.
These unusual barns, where dairy cows stood in a circle facing the silo for milking and feeding, were promoted as being more efficient, stronger, and as much as 58 percent cheaper to build than rectangular barns.
Alfred (1871-1939) was born in a sod house near present-day Renner, S. Dak. Marit (1874-1946), a widow, emigrated from Meraker, Norway, with her three children. Nine more children were born after their 1905 marriage.
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