The Summit Historical Society has announced that two historic structures in Summit County have officially been added to the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties.

The State Register Review Board voted unanimously Jan. 22 to add the Rice Family Barn and the Old Dillon Schoolhouse to the state register, Summit Historical Society director Jordan Bennett said.

“That’s a huge deal for the Summit Historical Society and the county at large as well,” Bennett said.

The Colorado State Register of Historic Properties is a list of the significant cultural resources that are worthy of preservation for the future education and enjoyment of the state’s residents and visitors, according to History Colorado.

The Summit Historical Society worked for about six months to ready the application to get the two historic structures added to the state register, Bennett said. There are now 11 historic properties in Summit County listed on the state historic register, including the Boreas Railroad Station, the Breckenridge Historic District, the Frisco Schoolhouse (now the town’s visitor center), the Montezuma Schoolhouse, the Soda Creek Homestead and Wildhack’s Grocery Store and post office (now Foote’s Rest in Frisco).

Constructed in 1883 in the old town of Dillon, the Dillon Schoolhouse is a historic schoolhouse with traditional clapboard siding, wood-framed windows and solid wood doors, according to the application the Summit Historical Society submitted to History Colorado.

The first Dillon school session to be held there started in 1884, when Dillon was still located at the center of Summit County, where the Dillon Reservoir is now. Of the 12 original one-room schoolhouses in the county, it is only one of three that remain.

The schoolhouse located on La Bonte Street in Dillon currently serves as the Summit Historical Society’s museum, and tours are currently available by appointment only. Bennett said the historical society is planning to host an event at the schoolhouse in the coming weeks to celebrate the state historic register designation, but a date has not yet been set.

The Rice Family Barn is a two-story barn that was constructed between 1917 and 1919 by Benjamin Franklin Rice and his three sons, Norman, Earl and Ben Jr., according to the application to History Colorado. During his life, Benjamin Rice served as a county commissioner in Summit County.

The barn — which was used to house draft horses, hay and equipment to help the town of Dillon — is the best preserved example of a ranching homestead in Summit County that is open to the public, the application states. It represents a key chapter in the county’s history, between the mining boom of the late 19th century and the beginnings of modern Summit County in the mid-20th century.

Bennett said that even though horses haven’t been housed at the Rice Family Barn in more than 70 years, it still smells like horses and hay when visitors walk inside. She said the Rice Family Barn will be open for tours this summer.

“You just feel like you’re stepping back in time,” Bennett said. “It’s just such a sensory thing that just surrounds you. So it’s like this magical stepping back in history where you’re like ‘Wow, it smells like there were horses in here like two days ago.'”

Listing on the state historical register is a formal recognition of a property’s importance to the history of Colorado. Being listed also brings benefits, including eligibility to compete for grants from Colorado’s State Historical Fund and eligibility to apply for state tax credits for restoration, rehabilitation or preservation.

To be added to the state historical register, properties go through a multi-step application process to prove that they have historical significance and meet certain criteria. As part of the application process, both the Dillon Town Council and the Summit Board of County Commissioners signed intergovernmental agreements recognizing the historic significance of the Old Dillon Schoolhouse and Rice Family Barn.

“This is truly a collaborative effort to get these on the register because this will not have been possible without our board being so fantastic,” Bennett said. “Some of them were editing text, some of them were finding GPS coordinates for the building during the preliminary application, and some of them were even just providing word-of-mouth history like ‘I saw this tidbit about the schoolhouse in this book.'”