Kittitas County is the first county in Washington to have a barn quilt trail. The trail is a self-guided driving tour with information such as where the barn quilts are located and the history behind each quilt.

The trail includes 18 different locations in the Ellensburg/Kittitas area.

Jackie Fausset, president of Barn Quilts of Kittitas County, said aw barn quilt is a painted quilt block on three-quarter-inch plywood and is usually eight-by-eight feet.

The quilt blocks represent something significant about the family or farm, and most of them are based on an old family quilt.

“The whole barn quilt trail is meant to call attention to our agricultural history and industry in Kittitas County,” Fausset said.

Visitors can pick up maps from the Cle Elum or Ellensburg visitors’ centers.  The maps can also be accessed on smartphones.

“It honors people who have done a lot of the hard work of building the foundations of our county and don’t really get recognized for that,” said Lyn Derrick, vice president of Barn Quilts of Kittitas County.

Fausset said the first barn quilt trail started in 2001 with a painting by Donna Sue Groves.

“She painted one for her mother’s barn, an old tobacco farm, and then the neighbor wanted one, and then another neighbor, and so by end of the first year, there were like 20 barn quilts on this little rural road in southern Ohio,” Fausset said.

Groves shared how she made the quilts and what kind of paint she used  with her neighbors. Fausset said she has continued  doing this for 14 years.

Three years ago, Fausset gathered with a group of people and made the project a reality. They thought Kittitas County would be perfect since there are thousands of barns.

Fausset said the people of the county loved the idea and there was no hard sell.

Fausset also said the first barn quilt installed in Kittitas County was at Dusty’s Nursery which is the old Dominion Barn.

“Our hope has been that as people drive the barn quilt trail, and then as they come into the community, they’ll stop, visit the museums, shop and eat,” Fausset said. “It will benefit our economy that way.”

Fausset said the barn quilt trail gives people an opportunity, just a little over an hour out of Seattle, to explore and read about history.

“Our county has just incredible landscape photography and nice weather,” Fausset said. “It gives people a two-day trip. It’s just exploring, reading about history, taking photographs. We’ve had thousands of people take the barn quilt tour.”

Derrick is working on writing a book about the barn quilt trail in Kittitas County.

Derrick said she hopes to include historical photographs along with current photos of barns and pictures of the actual families.

There will also be a section about how the barn quilts have been making history since, in the future, barn quilts will be a thing of the past.

Fausset said the trail is a good activity for Central students and their families.

“I think their parents would love to take a drive through the county and see the area and where their students are living,” Fausset said.