Roof redo showcases Elk Park history

This 70-year-old structure – likely the largest former dairy barn in Jefferson County, capable of holding 85 cows – has a new lease on life thanks to a $100,000 roof upgrade.

Eighty years ago Elk Park was home to a handful of dairy farms serving the booming population of Butte. But one by one they halted dairy operations over the decades, the last in 2000. Now one former dairy farmer, 85-year-old Joe Sologub Sr., is working to preserve the district’s dairy history by fixing up his family’s aging barn.

Sologub’s father bought the farm in the 1920s, and Joe grew up milking cows. Their growing herd soon needed a larger space, so in 1955 the family built the current barn around their old one. Sologub remembers a time when the barn housed 85 milk cows. “A lot of smell,” he said, recalling shoveling manure out of the barn gutters in winter.