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, after seeing octagon barns out in Iowa and deciding he wanted one on his own farm. (Purdy ran a Gagetown bank that was one of the few in Michigan to survive the Great Depression, and he later helped push for the law that created federal deposit insurance — so your bank account owes him a small thank-you.)

After the farm changed hands and fell into disrepair, the state bought it, and in the 1990s a group of neighbors rallied to save the barn from being torn down. They restored it and the old farmhouse and 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, and every year just after Labor Day it hosts “Fall Family Days,” a big old-fashioned farm festival with antique tractors and threshing demonstrations that draws thousands of people. The museum’s website has hours and event dates.