Spring Hill Ranch buildings
By JIM HOY
© Plains Folk
In my last column I wrote about Stephen F. Jones, who established the Spring Hill Ranch that later became known as the Z-Bar Ranch, which in turn now is the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, part of the national park system.
What probably attracts visitors as much as the wide open spaces of the ranch's nearly 11,000 acres of tallgrass prairie are the imposing buildings.
As his ranch grew, Jones decided to construct a substantial set of ranch buildings on a hillside overlooking Fox Creek. All the structures — house, barn, spring house/smoke house, workshop, chicken house, and outhouse — were built of native limestone quarried nearby.
Construction, which took about a year and a half, began in September 1880. The total cost of the project was some $40,000, over half of which went into the three-story house which was built in the Second Empire style, popular in France at the time.
The work crew numbered 20 men, whose bustling activity amid the sprawl of ranch buildings caused some travelers coming down from Council Grove to think they had arrived at Strong City itself.
Inside the house on the ground level to the northwest is a root cellar, while to the north a tunnel leads to a spring house, where fresh flowing spring water kept milk, eggs, and vegetables cool. Outside, in an unusual combination, a smokehouse was built on top of the spring house.
Just to the northwest is an elaborate limestone outhouse, one with lace curtains. The chicken house, as well, is an impressive structure.
Lying southwest of the house and just north of the barn, this barrel-vaulted, sod-covered stone poultry shelter built into the side of a slope is larger than some of the dugouts that served as homes for pioneer families in Chase County.
Equally as impressive as the house is the three-story barn on the south side of the grounds. Built into the side of a south-sloping hill, the barn at 6,480 square feet was the second largest in Kansas at the time of its completion.
The bottom floor was used for stabling horses, while the upper two floors served to store hay, grain, and implements. The second floor can be entered at ground level from the north, while the two ramps entering the third floor allowed a grain wagon to enter on one side and exit from the other after being unloaded into a granary. Gravity dispensed grain down chutes to feed boxes on the bottom floor.
It took two and a half tons of tin to cover the barn when it was roofed in December of 1881.
Originally a large windmill with 30-foot blades was built into the roof on the north side of the barn. It was intended for use in shelling and grinding corn, but the extreme vibrations threatened the stability of the barn so the windmill was removed.
Jones was eminently successful in his desire to impress visitors and passersby with the appearance of his ranch. In 1887 a local newspaper reported: "Our return home was down the west side of the creek, passing a number of good looking farm houses and a fine farming country, along the road, until we arrive at the palatial residence of the wealthiest man in the county, S. F. Jones. It stands on a very prominent hill and can be seen for miles, either way. At a distance it could be readily taken for an old Scotch castle, with secret stairways and underground passages. It is a magnificent structure, and we would convey no possible idea of its beauty with less than a half column of descriptive writing of the highest order."
In one of the first such designations in the state of Kansas, the Spring Hill Ranch buildings were placed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 16, 1971. In 1997 the entire ranch was designated a National Historic Landmark.
