Stephen F. Jones and the Spring Hill Ranch
By JIM HOY
© Plains Folk
On Aug. 18 in the summer of 1878, an interesting man detrained at Cottonwood Station, as Strong City was known in those days. His name was Stephen F. Jones, a wealthy rancher from Colorado by way of Texas.
Most likely he had in previous years accompanied some of his cattle when he shipped them on the Santa Fe railroad to the Kansas City stockyards and had noticed the lush grasses of the Flint Hills as he passed through.
Whatever it was that caught his attention about the area, he decided to start a ranch in Chase County. Ten days after his arrival he bought a quarter section farm on Fox Creek, and he continued to buy adjoining property to the east and west until he had amassed some 7,000 acres.
Some of the plots he bought were only 40 acres in size, some up to 1,000 acres. Some he bought from individuals and some was railroad land he bought from the Katy and the Santa Fe.
Although Jones did not move his wife and four children with him to Kansas on Aug. 18, he did bring with him 82 carloads of "fine Colorado cattle," unloading some 2,000 head that very day. Two days later he unloaded 1,500 more, grazing them on open range in Chase and Morris counties.
Jones was a southerner, born in 1826, and reared in Tennessee. In 1849, he married Louisa Barber and left for Texas, settling on a stock ranch in Van Zandt County. There he was joined by his two younger brothers, Peyton and Jim. The Jones brothers prospered and in 1869, decided, as had such other Texas ranchers as Charles Goodnight, to establish holdings in the good cow-country of eastern Colorado.
By 1871 the JJ Ranch was flourishing south of Las Animas. In his first few months in Kansas, Jones continued to bring in cattle from Colorado and he also built a small house on his original quarter section. Even though the herd law was not in effect at the time Jones arrived in Chase County, he nevertheless began immediately to have fences built. Within five years his 7,000 acres were surrounded by some 30 miles of stone wall, some of which is still visible today.
Jones was a pioneer in enclosed, as opposed to open-range, ranching in the Flint Hills, and he soon became well known around the state for his efforts to improve the quality of his cattle.
By 1887, Jones' ranch was valued at $200,000, this at a time when a single dollar was considered a good day's wages. In addition to his fine herd of Hereford, Durham (Shorthorn), and Galloway cattle, the ranch also raised purebred Hambletonian horses and Berkshire hogs.
Besides the 400 acres of bottom land used for raising grain, the ranch also had 300 acres of tame and prairie hay, an acre of sweet and Irish potatoes, an orchard of more than 400 apple, peach, plum, cherry, and pear trees, and a quarter-acre each of raspberry bushes, blackberry bushes, and grape vines.
Jones named his ranch the Spring Hill Ranch, for the flowing springs on the site where in 1880, he began construction on the impressive limestone buildings that stand there today as a three-story, Second-Empire limestone house and a three-story limestone barn, the second largest in Kansas at the time of construction. Today Jones's Spring Hill Ranch and those impressive buildings are open to the public as the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, a couple of miles north of Strong City on highway K-177. If you haven't visited yet, it's worth the trip.
