Eli Became NOAH for a Year and Built an Ark in 2016

When the American Countryside Farmers Market opened in Indiana, it was the largest timber-frame structure in the world.  Timber framing is a method of construction which, even among the hand-work and construction-minded Amish, is somewhat of a niche specialty.  Finding an Amish company to build a house, a barn, or even a very large farmers market is relatively easy.  Many Amish make their living in the construction trade.  

However, timber-framing (which uses fully sized heavy logs instead of hewn lumber like two-by-fours) is a much less common way to build, and thus draws far fewer Amish into it as a career.  Still, in Lancaster County there are at least six timber-framing companies.  One of these companies, Highline Construction was heavily involved with the construction of the Ark Encounter, a massive recreation of the biblical ark built by Noah to survive the flood.  

When the Ark Encounter opened in 2016, becoming the new record-holder for largest timber-frame structure in the world, it took three million board feet of wood to complete the 1.5 football field spanning attraction.  The finished ark is 510 feet long and over 50 feet tall.  

The structure was erected one timber half-frame at a time, with each piece weighing between 12 and 16 tons, depending on what part of the ark they were at.  In all, they raised at least 60 of these frames.  Eli Stoltzfus, Highline Construction’s owner, was hired by the Ark Encounter to be the on-site supervisor of the timber framing, and Stoltzfus directed a team of between 30 to 70 Amish workers each day, depending on the complexity of the day’s work.  

Stoltzfus, being from Lancaster, was much too far from home to hire a driver for a daily commute, so he remained there during the week and arranged for a driver to come home on weekends.  Some of the Amish workers were from the Ohio settlement, so hiring drivers for a daily commute was possible.  The entire project took over a year to complete.  

— Clinton Martin