The Thumb's eight-sided barn

Just outside the little village of Gagetown stands one of the Thumb’s most unusual landmarks: a big, eight-sided barn. A local banker named James Purdy built it in 1924. He had seen octagon barns out in Iowa and decided he wanted one on his own farm. (Purdy’s Gagetown bank was one of the few in Michigan to survive the Great Depression. He later helped push for the law that created federal deposit insurance — so your bank account owes him a small thank-you.)

The farm changed hands and fell into disrepair, and the state bought it. In the 1990s, a group of neighbors rallied to save the barn from being torn down. They restored it and the old farmhouse. Then they gathered up other historic farm buildings — a one-room school, a sawmill, a grain elevator — into what’s now the Thumb Octagon Barn Agricultural Museum. It’s open for tours in the warmer months. Every year just after Labor Day it hosts “Fall Family Days,” a big old-fashioned farm festival that draws thousands of people. Think antique tractors and threshing demonstrations.