Bulloch County's Historic Barns
The Bulloch County Historical Society has been working in a unique collaboration with Dr. Gus Moldanado, Dr. Marcel Maghiar, Ms. Mariah Peart and undergraduate students of Georgia Southern University’s Department of Civil Engineering and Construction to create 3D virtual scans of Bulloch County barns. As a graduate student under the direction of Drs. Moldanado and Maghiar, Mariah Peart used Terrestrial LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and a method called visual alignment to create 3D virtual models of the barns while teaching the technology to undergraduate students. She then created the 3D flythrough movies shown here to allow anyone to virtually visit and study the barns.
THANK YOU >
We want to thank the owners of the barns for allowing us access to their treasured structures and for sharing them with the public:
Edwin and Danalyn Akins
Remer Dekle
Gerald Edenfield
Georgia Southern Botanic Garden
Bonnie Dekle Howard
Betty, John & Lynn Rushing
Dave & Carrie Welter
The Akins Barn
This barn is behind the circa 1910 farmhouse home of Edwin and Danalyn Akins in Stilson, Georgia. It is the last survivor of several outbuildings including a sm...
The Remer Dekle Barn
This barn was built by Remer Dekle’s father, John Lehmon Dekle (1915-1991). He was a farmer all of his life. He graduated from Register School and attended the ...
The Gerald and Sharon Edenfield Barn
This cow barn was built by Morgan Brown (1856-1921) around the turn of the century from lumber cut on the farm. Originally, there was also a mule barn, but it w...
Georgia Southern University Botanic Garden Barn
Dan and Catherine Bland were, in the early twentieth century, the original owners of the farm and property that is now the Georgia Southern University Botanic G...
The Bonnie Dekle Howard Barn
This barn was built by Bonnie Dekle Howard’s grandfather, George Adam Dekle (1884-1970). Other grandchildren were: Johnnie Dekle, Remer Dekle and Mary Dekle Os...
The Rushing Barn
In 1915, after 4 years of marriage to Janie Virginia DeLoach, John N. Rushing decided that he needed a barn to house his growing number of livestock. After hear...
The Dave and Carrie Welter Mule Barn
The barn was built in the early twentieth century (exact date unknown). The purpose of the barn was to house mules being held for auction at the livery stables ...
LiDAR Technology and Scanning: A Brief Explanation
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Terrestrial LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanning technology is a relatively new concept that is used in the construction industry. This technology uses a non-contact, non-destructive laser beam to digitally capture the physical attributes of an environment from ground-level. The LiDAR scanning instrument, employed in this project, was strategically placed in several locations, both internally and externally, to obtain three-dimensional scan images for every surface of the historic structures. After all scans were collected from each barn, a corresponding laser scanning software was employed to create 3D virtual world models. A method called, Visual Alignment, was used to align/stitch each scan, of similar features, together to produce the single complex 3D model for each barn.
Ms. Mariah Peart
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Mariah Peart is from Brunswick, Georgia and graduated with a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Georgia Southern University in 2019. As a graduate student, Mariah assisted in various research projects including the virtual preservation project of local historic barns for the Bulloch County Historical Society with the advanced technology of 3D Laser Scanning. This virtual preservation project received the First Place Award in the 2019 Eagle Showcase: Excellence in Service Learning event at Georgia Southern University. In February of 2019, Mariah also received a national award from the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the top 10 2019 New Faces of Civil Engineering Professionals. The Bulloch County Historical Society thanks Ms. Peart for her leadership and dedication to this project.
Photos of students working on the project.
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