Spring Hill Ranch House: A Four-Level Limestone Home on the Kansas Flint Hills

Lithograph of Spring Hill Ranch, circa 1880s (NPS).

While the ranch house was going up, so much activity surrounded it that travelers often thought they had reached Strong City, Kansas, two miles to the south, and tried to find a room for the night. The house, now part of Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, is the center of the Spring Hill Farm and Stock Ranch that Stephen F. Jones started in the Flint Hills.

The Joneses and their ranch

Stephen F. Jones came to Kansas in August 1878 with his wife Louisa and their daughter Loutie, the youngest of five children, to start a cattle ranch. The family had done well in the cattle business in Texas and Colorado from the 1850s through the 1870s. Jones arrived with $100,000 to spend on the ranch, which he named for the many springs he found on the property. He eventually acquired about 7,000 acres and built over 30 miles of limestone fence around it. In August 1878 he bought 160 acres of rich bottomland along Fox Creek for $2,000, and the ranch began there.

Fox Creek bottomland, seen from the front porch of the ranch house (NPS).

The house

The house was built of native limestone and faces east, which makes a dramatic first impression. It is in the French Second Empire style, popular in the 1870s and 1880s and shared by buildings such as the Chase County Courthouse. Its marks are a mansard roof enclosing the upper story with dormers and projecting gables, and stone cornices, brackets and quoins. Building the four-level, eleven-room house cost $25,000, and local records say it took 20 men working night and day.

Parlors and entry. The formal entry and two parlors were the most elegantly decorated part of the house, with large entry doors, a custom-built walnut staircase and a tall foyer. A newspaper reporter who visited in 1882 called it one of the most elegantly furnished houses in eastern Kansas, with velvet and Brussels carpets and large, costly mirrors. None of the original furnishings survive, and the parlor furnishings on show were donated to the preserve in 1995. The mantelpieces, baseboards, faux walnut woodwork, doors, windows, hardware and most of the plaster crown molding are original.

The north parlor (top) and south parlor (bottom), decorated with period, non-original furnishings (NPS).

Staircase. With only minor changes, the walnut staircase is as it was when installed. It was built to order away from the house and assembled while the house was under construction, from 1880 to 1881. Each of its 98 balusters was carved by hand, and the bannister is 17 hand-carved walnut pieces put together using Roman numerals on the underside of each. The pine boards on the landing are original. Most of the other original pine flooring was replaced in the 20th century and is now covered in oak.

The formal walnut staircase (NPS).

Kitchen, root cellar and spring room

The former kitchen areas show the changes inside the house more than any other space. Later residents divided the space into the present utility room and bathroom. The Joneses cooked downstairs and carried food up a short staircase and by dumbwaiter to a butler's pantry, where it was plated for the dining room. Later residents turned the pantry into a modern kitchen and removed the dumbwaiter. In the 1920s and 1930s the house's kitchen moved into the widened butler's pantry, and a doorway joined the dining room to the sitting room.

The root cellar kept preserved fruit, vegetables and homemade foods cool and dry, and it doubled as a storm shelter because Louisa had a great fear of tornadoes and wanted one she could reach quickly. Down a tunnel is the spring room, where perishable food was stored. Spring water from a cistern on the hill west of the house was piped to the kitchen and into this room, where it kept a shallow trough full. Containers of milk and cheese stood in the cold water, and the trapped cool air also helped. The water then went around a channel to a second, underground cistern east of the spring room, where it powered a small fountain in front of the house and irrigated gardens, an orchard and a vineyard in the bottomland.

The original kitchen (top), root cellar (middle) and spring room (bottom) (NPS).

Other rooms

The first use of the office was as the ranch office, with telephone service. People on ranch business came in directly from outside through the west side door. The back porch was enclosed in the 1920s, and later residents made the room a bedroom, with quick outdoor access for overnight emergencies on the ranch.

The middle floor also held the original dining room and a sitting room to its east, where most evenings were spent when the parlors were not in use. In the 20th century the sitting room may have become the main living room when the formal parlors were turned into storage rooms. Three rooms on the upper floor served as bedrooms and guest rooms for the Joneses, extended family and guests. The upper floor also had a bathing room with a copper bathtub and water tank, though the household still used an outhouse.

Sources

• National Park Service, Spring Hill Ranch House, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve; rewritten in hubnx's own words.