Found Two Old Houses And Barns. Have A Question

Is this private or public property?

Your county clerk should have information on the ownership, past and present of the parcel of land on which this structure stands. Take a screen shot of the Google view with you to help in narrowing down the township and range ID. Looks interesting. FYI - my old garage, which probably was built in 1925 or so, leaned like this, too. I hired Frick and Frack to take it down, and even though they cut through the support 2x4's and hooked a chain to it, it almost didn't come down. I salvaged the 2x4's, all southern yellow pine, and so far have made a workshop bench top from them. They used REAL lumber back in those days, so your structure might stand for decades.

I would not enter that place at all.

There should be county plat maps at your county seat. The ones I have seen, seem to be done about every 10 years and would have a mark and a name for each house.

Also a lot of counties you can access tax information online. For our county it shows each piece of property. It also list when house was built, who owns it .. price of last couple sales. with plat and satellite maps. Maybe your county has something similar.

From the spray painted graffiti inside, it's obvious that someone else knows about the place as well. From your pictures, it is hard to tell whether this was a house or an outbuilding. Is there a back door to it? It looks to me as though the first picture above might well be the front of the place. From the apparent age of it, though, it is possible that there may be some collectibles lurking.

Figure out where the back door or back porch is. Take a glass bottle or jar and throw it as hard as you can -- where it lands would probably be the distance away from the house where you will find the garbage pit. Sweep the area to see if you can find it. Old bottles can be worth big bucks, as can such things as old beer cans. With the latter, do not worry if they look rusty -- they usually had a very deep layer of paint on them pre-World War II, and most of what looks like rust will come off of them with the right acid bath. Note that the oldest beer cans have necks on them and are called "conetops". Some of these can be worth hundreds.

See if there is some kind of a landmark that you can see from the kitchen window -- a big boulder, or something, and also see if you can see a fenceline. Since there was usually no bank readily available, some people put their cash in a can of some sort and buried it where they could keep an eye on it. This is where you want to swing a detector.

FWIW, look at the nails used in the structure. That's one good way to determine it's age. Ate they the conventional "wire" nails used today or the older "cut" nails that we see blacksmiths using on horse shoes. Also look at the framing and floor trusses. In order of relative age: is the wood factory "plained" with smooth corners, does it show the signs of a band saw cut "||||||", a circular saw cut "((((((((" or possibly pit saw cut "///////". Also look at the foundation, is it concrete or stone?

you need to find that colorblind student and 'splain they used Wolfpack red