Prairie Wanderings: A house, a barn, and a schoolhouse of limestone
By PAUL G. JANTZEN
Contributing writer
The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve features 17 square miles of rolling hills carpeted with green spring grasses and multicolored wildflowers. Two miles north of Strong City in Kansas' Chase County, the area was established as a preserve in 1996, dedicated to help visitors experience the rich natural and cultural history of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem.
The preserve, first known as the Z Bar/Spring Hill Ranch, was established by Stephen F. Jones, a wealthy cattleman from Colorado. He was attracted by the lush growth of big bluestem, Indian, and switch grasses. Eventually he owned 7,000 acres of prime grazing and crop land here in the Flint Hills. In the 1870s and 1880s, livestock ranching evolved from open range to confined grazing. The 1885 census reported that Spring Hill Ranch had 30 miles of stone fence, probably made of rocks found on ranch land.
About 80 percent of Chase County is rangeland. Small tracts of cropland are scattered in hilly grazing areas but most cropland is in valleys along the Cottonwood River and smaller streams such as nearby Fox Creek. Only in these areas is the soil deep enough for agriculture. Subsurface rocks exposed on the slopes of hills reveal the limestone, shale, and chert (flint) that were deposited at the bottom of the shallow Permian sea from 290 to 240 million years ago. For 50 million years, alternate invasions and recessions of the sea left alternating deposits of limestone and shale, some of the limestone containing nodules of chert, or flint — thus the name Flint Hills. Many of these limestones contain the fossils of sea creatures such as fusulinids, echinoids, bryozoans, crinoids and brachiopods.
The rocks here have protected the land from the plow.
The Preserve's headquarters features two outstanding structures, a barn, and a house. The three-story limestone barn was built into the side of a hill to house livestock, shelter equipment, and store the hay and grain used for feeding livestock in winter. It measures 60 by 110 feet, two feet short of being the largest barn in the state. Two partly earthen ramps accommodated wagon access from the uphill side to the third story where grain was dumped down to the second floor for storage. As needed, the grain was directed down to the stables on the first floor for feeding horses and other livestock.
The 11-room house completed in 1881 was built of limestone quarried on ranch land. It was built into the hillside for natural insulation. A nearby hillside spring furnished cool water piped underground to a cistern, then to a spring house where it was used to keep food cold. Spring Hill Ranch was an appropriate name for this land.
Terraced gardens graced the slope in front of the house which faces Kansas Highway 177, which reaches from Interstate Highway 70, south through Council Grove, passes Spring Hill Ranch, through Strong City and Cottonwood Falls, to Cassoday near Interstate Highway 35. This is one segment of the Kansas Scenic Byways Program. There are currently six byways scattered in Kansas with more in the designation process.
Across the valley from the mansion is the Lower Fox Creek School, a one-room prairie schoolhouse, also built of limestone. It is accessible by hiking the 1.75-mile Southwind Nature Trail which "winds across rolling hills, over a spring-fed stream lined with cottonwood and hackberry trees, and through a fascinating array of grasses and wildflowers.
