In United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (1987), officers crossed through open fields and approached a barn, which had a doorway, the bottom of which was blocked by a locked door, and the top of which was covered by netting. Officers shone a flashlight through the doorway and secured a search warrant based upon their observations. In finding that the officers behaved lawfully, the court first noted that because the barn was in "open fields," the officers were standing in an area where they had a right to be. The court then assumed, for the sake of argument, that the barn enjoyed Fourth Amendment protection. Nonetheless, the court quoted Texas v. Brown, supra, 460 U.S. at pages 739-740, and decided that it was "beyond dispute" that the shining of the flashlight to illuminate the interior did not violate the Fourth Amendment. The court stated that "the officers' use of the beam of a flashlight, directed through the essentially open front of respondent's barn, did not transform their observations into an unreasonable search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment." ( United States v. Dunn, supra, 480 U.S. at p. 305.) In that case, law enforcement officials had information suggesting that large quantities of chemicals and equipment used to manufacture amphetamine and phenylacetone were located in one of the defendant's barns on his 198-acre ranch property. Two barns were located 50 yards from a fence surrounding the defendant's house and 60 yards from the house itself. (Id. at pp. 296-297, 302.) Law enforcement officials made a warrantless entry onto the defendant's property and, standing about midway between the house and the barns, smelled the odor of phenylacetic acid coming from the direction of the barns. (Id. at p. 297.) The officers then crossed over three fences to look in one of the barns, where they observed what appeared to be a phenylacetone laboratory. (Id. at pp. 297-298.) The officers then departed, but returned twice more the next day to confirm the presence of the laboratory. (Id. at p. 298.) The Supreme Court identified four factors relevant to determining whether an area is part of a home's curtilage: "the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by." In discussing these factors, we are mindful they are not to be "mechanically applied," and are merely "useful analytical tools only to the degree that, in any given case, they bear upon the centrally relevant consideration--whether the area in question is so intimately tied to the home itself that it should be placed under the home's 'umbrella' of Fourth Amendment protection." Id. In United States v. Dunn, the United States Supreme Court recognized that "the central component of the inquiry into the extent of a home's curtilage is whether the area harbors the 'intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life.'" 480 U.S. at 300. The Dunn Court set forth four factors for the court to consider in resolving a curtilage question: We believe that curtilage questions should be resolved with particular reference to four factors: the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by. 480 U.S. at 301. The factors are not a laundry list, nor are they to be construed as a formula which will yield a correct answer to extent-of-curtilage questions in every situation. Id. In determining whether the officers had invaded the curtilage of the defendant's home, the United States Supreme Court utilized the following four factors: "the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by. " (Dunn, supra, 480 U.S. at p. 301.) First, the court found that the substantial distance of the barn from the house (60 yards) did not support an inference that the barn should be treated as an adjunct of the house; second, there was a fence surrounding the house, which identified the land within the fence as "part and parcel of the house"; third, the information available to the officers indicated that "the use to which the barn was being put could not fairly be characterized as so associated with the activities and privacies of domestic life that the officers should have deemed the barn as part of the defendant's home"; and fourth, although there were multiple fences between the road and the barn, those fences were not of the type designed to prevent people from observing inside the enclosed areas. (Id. at pp. 302-303.) The Supreme Court concluded that no constitutional violation had occurred when the officers stood "outside the curtilage of the house and in the open fields upon which the barn was constructed, and peered into the barn's open front." (Id. at p. 304.)