The milking cows are long gone now. But the pastoral barn on the 1800s-era Voelcker Historic Farmstead is back in action.
The Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy has nearly completed $600,000 worth of restoration on the 1925 milking parlor situated in the northeast section of the 330-acre public park in North San Antonio.
A lasting vestige of what was once a thriving industry in the region, the renewed old barn listed on the National Register of Historic Places will open for events and education programming later this year.
Buttermilk Hill is back — just without the bovine.
The barn, two old houses and a windmill are what’s left of the former dairy farm owned by Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker, and the end of an era.
In Bexar County, by the late 1800s, there were so many dairies dotting the countryside that the area that it came to be known as Buttermilk Hill, according to author Gayle Brennan Spencer in her book, “Last Farm Standing on Buttermilk Hill.”
But the work to raise and milk cows and deliver cream and butter into the city was hard. Mechanization and transportation advances caught up with the industry.
Today, area residents are likely buy their gallon of milk from somewhere like the dairy section at the Alon Market H-E-B, which sits on land where the Voelckers raised cattle.
But soon they can revisit how it once was.
Workers are putting the finishing touches now on an outdoor deck space enveloping century oaks next to the barn where a dozen cows would have been and milked before heading back out into the pasture.
For decades, since the cows were rounded up and moved, the old barn was used for storage. It now has a fresh coat of paint inside and out, new level flooring installed over the original sloped one, and restrooms.
Small fans installed along the ceiling move fresh air that sweeps in through the open windows.
The San Antonio architecture firm Ford Powell Carson oversaw the privately-funded historic preservation, adding modern conveniences and making the barn accessible.
In 2021, the city’s Historic and Design Review Commission declined to designate as historically significant the 1950s-era Bacon-Steubing Farm, a 12-acre parcel of land and dairy barn at DeZavala Road and J.V. Bacon Parkway.
The decision cleared the way for demolition of a decrepit barn, feed room and milk house for a commercial site.
The Conservancy is preparing for a special unveiling and donor appreciation event on Sept. 12, and its annual Dairy Days festival, open to the public on Nov. 7.
“Part of our goal behind the barn restoration is so we could have more people experience this area [of the park] rather than just once a year,” said Melissa Kazen, executive director of the Hardberger Park Conservancy.
Kazen’s looking to plan a series of homesteading workshops at the homestead on skills like composting and planting throughout the year and use the barn to help, she said, “to help tell the story of the place.”
The Voelckers owned about 1,000 acres of land in the area and operated the dairy farm for many years prior to Max’s death in 1980. Minnie lived on the farmstead until her death in 2000.
Longtime caretakers of the remaining cattle and homestead still reside in the Voelckers’ home.
The white Craftsman sits behind a set of gates along a park path and near a butterfly garden run by the Alamo Area Master Naturalists and a demonstration garden tended by the Bexar County Master Gardeners.
Opening the gates and the homestead to park-goers has long been part of the Conservancy’s master plan.
“Input from our citizens was they wanted everything to remain in its natural state,” Kazen said. “So [we decided] let’s look at our historic assets that are already here that aren’t being utilized.”
