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If you are a classic TV fan, you know the 1980s family staple, Highway to Heaven.
If you are a classic hard rock music fan, you know the circa 1979 AC/DC mega-hit LP Highway to Hell.
And, if you’re a Berks Countian who likes to traverse local byways, you know the Hex Highway.
It affords unquestionably stunning vistas of rolling farmland and the impressive Blue Mountains that comprise the natural ridge of the county’s northern boundaries.
Running, more or less, from Strausstown to New Smithville, just over the Berks border into Lehigh County, Hex Highway is also known as Old Route 22. The 87-mile stretch was the go-to thoroughfare before it was replaced in the late 1950s by the Interstate 78 superhighway which pretty much parallels it.
Hex Highway also fronts what was once America’s First Frontier,
the last stop before early 18th century adventurers made it through the forested hills into central Pennsylvania and beyond.
Deep-rooted History
Those traveling the early incarnations of Old Route 22 were likely the first to hear the lore of both cultures as they visited taverns or found lodging on their way east to New York and New Jersey and west towards Harrisburg.
Small towns and villages sprung up among the vast farms that dominated the area. For farmers, it was the size and style of their barns, not their houses, that spoke to their prosperity and ranking.
Travelers took with them the tales of this area through written word and illustrations, and eventually through photos. Key among the intriguing ethnic eccentricities were the folk-art designs applied to the barns.
Today travelers, courtesy of Pennsylvania’s Americana Region visitors’ bureau, can mirror their predecessors and follow a self-guided tour that features the best of these decorated barns, many of which are on or just off Old Route 22.
Berks Countians are likely familiar with what many call the Hex Sign Tour. But the bureau’s moniker, the Barn Star Art Tour, is actually the more accurate title.
Many may be surprised to realize that the “hex sign” terminology is relatively recent.
According to Patrick Donmoyer, whose devotion, scholarship and expertise has elevated him to director of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University, it was from the 1924 publication of Wallace Nutting’s Pennsylvania Beautiful that the phraseology emerged. Prior to this, local farmers called the barn paintings flowers or stars, blume or sterne in German. But one farmer interviewed by Nutting described them as Hexefoos, which translates to witch’s foot.
Donmoyer took the explanation a bit further in a 2019 cultural exhibition catalog on Barn Stars at Glencairn Museum: “The “Hexefuss,” a term translating to “witch’s foot,” was the inspiration for “hex sign” in predominant use today. [It was once] a chalk marking used by farmers to ward off the influence of the supernatural. This was an ancient ritual marking that resembled the upright foot of a goose, and in some cases farmers would even nail the actual foot of a goose onto a barn door for protection from evil. This ritual, however, bore no visual similarity with the colorful painted stars on the barns.”
“Die Hexezeeche is a Pennsylvania Dutch adaptation of an earlier European German phrase which refers more directly to small-scale images created either for the purpose of protecting an individual or building from witchcraft, or small-scale images created for the purpose of witchcraft. This type of activity can be seen in some markings found inside barns, homes and outbuildings, but it cannot be applied in a comprehensive sense to the large-scale designs on barns.”
It was the Hexefoos in Nutting’s book that seemed to catch on with the developing tourist trade.
“His account was widely disseminated across the United States,” says Donmoyer, “and the locals were not amused.”
However, the money that the increasing number of visitors began to spend considerably offset that indignation.
Signs of Artistry
One local, Milton Hill, an accomplished barn star painter in the early 20th century from Virginville, did his best through his craft to clarify the phraseology.
But Hill’s efforts paled next to those of Johnny Ott, a colorful entrepreneur who made his mark capitalizing on his talent for painting and for storytelling. By the early 1940s, he was partnering with Jacob Zook of Paradise, Lancaster County, to mass produce round heavy cardboard disks for locals and tourists alike.
Ott’s home retail and entertaining base was the Deitsch Eck Hotel in Lenhartsville, a popular stop on his self-proclaimed Hex Highway, where he bartended, and where visitors could get hefty helpings of Pennsylvania Dutch food at bargain prices. The establishment, which still operates today, is replete with Ott’s original artwork on many surfaces.
“He was a popular person,” says Donmoyer. “He would tell tall tales; his work was attractive, and he would attach a story to each piece.”
Prolific local barn sign painter Eric Claypoole, whose late dad Johnny was Ott’s hand-picked protégé and successor, shares that opinion.
Ott, also by the early 1950s, “flavored the story” by creating hex signs with symbols of his own design, he says. So instrumental in the success of the Kutztown Folk Festival, Ott introduced what are now commonly accepted as traditional Pennsylvania German hex sign symbols – hearts, flowers (especially tulips) and birds (including the iconic Distelfink). The symbolism and the occasional references to the occult were sometimes at odds with Ott’s devout Catholicism, both Claypoole and Donmoyer contend.
“Johnny Ott codified this but didn’t precisely create the imagery,” says Donmoyer, noting the entrepreneur’s first efforts were on tin. “He took the curvilinear forms and married them to the geometric forms.”
Eric Claypoole also notes the genesis of these symbols has roots in early Pennsylvania German culture, from fraktur art in religious and ceremonial documents to highly decorated blanket chests.
As in the barn art, the artists would include the names or initials of the property owners as well as the important date — such as the construction of the barn or the date of marriage — on the chests.
Booking Meanings
Donmoyer authored Hex Signs: Myth and Meaning in Pennsylvania Dutch Barn Stars in 2013. Starting in 2008, he visited and documented some 400 barns in the nine-county southeastern area of the state.
He explains that the earliest of barn stars, circa 1790s through 1820-30s, were incorporated, originally painted not carved, into the masonry of the date board often located on the upper gable ends of barns. The stars combined with the initials of either the builders/owners and the date of construction.
Donmoyer says the stars had both celestial and Biblical meanings. These beacons of the cosmic order symbolized the passing of time and humanity’s witness to that.
As the mid-19th century approached, barns became larger as farmers’ prosperity increased. Framed gables, multi-level structures with arches over doors, were enticements for more defined painting and artwork, often with the barn stars placed symmetrically over the arches. Around this time, the farmer’s name, important date and barn stars began to be painted on the front of the barns. The circa 1855 barn at the cultural center is a good example of this.
The new style, says Donmoyer, “elevated the barn to symbolize the farmer’s status and his pride in farming. The barn, not the house, is the focal point.”
After the Civil War, work crews traveled the area and did much of the barn painting. It was during that period that red barns became common, the result of a cost-effective mixture of pigment, linseed oil and lead. The stars were still painted directly on the barn walls.
Hill’s interpretation of the barn stars took the art to a new level, Donmoyer says. By the 1920s, his work primarily applied to barns in the Windsor Castle, Edenburg, Virginville and Hamburg areas, featured star patterns of “alternating, contrasting colors” that receded to a central point. The star was bordered by a complex of overlapping arcs (some refer to them as scallops).
Eric and his dad, both prolific barn star painters, emulated Hill’s style. Hill, a modest man, regarded his work with what is now a common Pennsylvania German idiom: “Auch, they’re chust for nice.”
“He coined that phrase,” says Eric.
Sacred Geometry
Hill’s magic, to Eric Claypoole’s eye, is contained in the incorporation of angles, circles and other shapes.
“To me, it’s a sacred geometry,” says Eric, a welder and tradesman who painted his first barn stars at age 12 under his dad’s watch in the mid 1970s. To date, his work has appeared on nearly 100 barns.
Eric Claypoole creates his stars in the same building his dad used, surrounded by Johnny’s work and his portrait. The rustic house and studio sit off a dirt lane outside Lenhartsville, where Eric and his siblings were raised. Crowded with an artist’s paints, brushes and works completed or in-process, along with scores of collectibles, it almost seems counterintuitive that such precise barn stars and hex signs are born in this studio that sits in a forested canopy.
The mystical geometry that captivates Eric speaks to the angles of the eight- and 12-point stars so common in barn stars. Sixty-degree angles, 45-degree angles, 16-degree angles, he contends, were all incorporated in the layouts
of ancient European cathedrals.
The numbers of repetitive patterns in many of the signs – 7, 13 and 22 – are almost magical, he says. Seven is symbolic of the days of Creation, 13 stands for Jesus Christ and his apostles, and 22, often the number of border scallops, represents the number of letters in the Jewish alphabet as well as symbolizes smooth sailing through life.
Eric takes special delight in finding the “ghosts” of century-plus barn stars. In his studio, he produces a weathered wooden barn board that appears to be lightly carved. In reality, the pattern on it is the result of paint breaking down the wood surface according to its design over a century of exposure. This “ghosting” (a phrase coined by Johnny Claypoole) offers clues to original barn star designs, some of which predate Hill’s work.
Eric has created his own ghosting techniques by painting designs and weathering with white wash in the bright sun on an open hillside field on his property, cutting the time from 100 years to less than seven.
Like Donmoyer, Eric Claypoole lectures about his work and the Pennsylvania German culture he loves. In addition to custom-made hex signs and barn stars, he also paints milk cans and produces a couple hundred hex sign disks each year for the Kutztown Folk Festival.
Johnny Ott was the force behind the festival at its start in the early 1950s. He realized the hex sign mystique entranced tourists, encouraging them to spend their money, not just on the round gaily decorated disks for sale at his hotel and at the festival, but also throughout the region. He was instrumental in organizing the Hex Tour Association, one of the state’s earliest tourist associations, some 60 years ago.
Saving the Stars
The group raised money to promote themselves and to preserve the barn stars/hex signs.
Though the group went dormant for a few years, former festival director David Fooks and tourism agent Ernie Lester revived it and created a brochure that provided an early self-guided barn tour.
The proceeds went into a specially created Barn Star Endowment Fund that is maintained by the Kutztown University Foundation. The fund is enhanced by the annual auction of four original barn stars/hex signs at each festival and by painting demonstrations performed by Donmoyer, Eric Claypoole and Andrew Shirk. The three- or four-foot-diameter disks sell,
on average, for $1,200.
The fund then matches 50 percent of the cost for a farmer/property owner to have a barn star preserved or to place one.
Both current Kutztown Festival Executive Director Steve Sharadin and Donmoyer believe this effort is key to keeping the art form alive.
In 2020, the sign auction, like the very popular quilt auction, which is comprised of 30 to 40 lots and is conducted by the Zettlemoyer Auction Company bringing in tens of thousands of dollars, went online.
Depending on the results, future auctions, even when the festival is back on its home grounds, may become a combination of on-site and online events.
Following the Stars
Lisa Haggerty, marketing manager for Pennsylvania’s Americana Region, encourages locals and tourists alike to take the self-guided “Barn Star Tour.”
Haggerty and her boss, Crystal Seitz, updated the brochure a few years ago, driving the back roads to make sure the barns cited remained and their locations were accurate.
“We tried to be painstakingly accurate in what we were giving to people,” says Haggerty. “We have more barn stars than anywhere. Berks County is the epicenter of barn art.”
Any time of year is a good for the tour, but the back roads and rolling farm country are especially beautiful in the autumn months, she says.
The tour brochures are a hot commodity both online (www.pageturnpro.com/GRCVB/
94324-Barn-Star-Art-Tour) and in print.
Haggerty says those taking the tour can do their part to help the economy by patronizing the small businesses along the winding route that also reaches to Hawk Mountain. One of them is the venerable Deitsch Eck, where Ott initiated the hex sign tour business so long ago.
“I think he’d be pleased with where we are today,” says Haggerty.
