Take an online tour, part 3

Shearing Shed

This building held the sheep as they were brought in to be sheared. The Pratts hired the shearers for this work and paid them five cents per sheep to clip the wool. The English sheepmen furnished local children, whom they call "fetchers," with shepherd's hooks and employed them to keep the shearers supplied with sheep. The shearers clipped the sheep by hand, and, as the fleeces were removed, the wool was stuffed into huge burlap bags, six feey deep. These bags were then hauled to the Studley depot and shipped to market.

The Pratt family raised Merino sheep. Fenton Pratt, his brother Tom, and their father became very successful sheep ranchers. In March and April of 1891 Fenton shipped a total of 3,566 pounds of wool to markets in St. Louis and Philadelphia. A month later the Pratts sold 3,399 pounds of wool to Hagey Brothers in St. Louis and received $522. Fenton's livestock tally for 1892 indicated 1,580 sheep on his ranch.

The northern two-thirds of this 112-feet-long building was used for shearing and lambing. The southern one-third was used to house vehicles such as a carriage and cutter sleigh. Although Fenton had sold all of his sheep in 1903, he continued to rent this shed to area sheepmen for shearing into the 1930s.

In 1916 Fenton Pratt purchase an Oakland Touring car, and the Pratts began using the south end of the building as a garage and for storage.

The Pratts recognized the availability of water was an important consideration in selecting the location of their homes. In 1903 twenty-one live springs flowed within a one-half mile radius of the Cottonwood Ranch. Four large cottonwood trees stand a few feet to the left of a whitish-gray concrete slab. This is the cap of a storage cistern for springwater. The spring is 15 feet north of this structure. Water seeped from the spring and flowed into the cistern which stored the water. The water then entered an underground steel pipeline, flowing into the house and washhouse. This spring supplied water for the house until 1972.

Before the days of rural electrification, ice provided a means of refrigeration. The Pratts built an icehouse in the western slope of a ravine about one hundred yards west of the house. Today its location is marked by a yellow post. The stone walls of the icehouse were below ground and the wood-shingled roof was above ground. A door was located on the east end of the twelve-by-fourteen-foot structure. Fenton Pratt hired neighbors to haul the ice from the frozen South Solomon River or nearby spring ponds to the icehouse. There the ice was packed in straw for insulation. The Pratts last used the icehouse in December 1932 when Harry Madden delivered fourteen wagonloads of ice at $1.25 a load.

For decades people in this area have played baseball. A baseball playing field was located on the level ground southwest of the icehouse. A post with attached red flag was part of the backstop located on the south side of the diamond. The community used this ball diamond into the 1950s.

White stakes mark the course of an early trail. This trail went in front of the house, trending northwest along the east side of the shallow ravine. It wrapped around the head of the ravine then, coursed to the southwest. In the 1880s this river trail was the main transportation lie between the vicinities of Hill City and Hoxie. Hundreds of wagon wheels have left behind a shallow swale, which can be seen in the pasture from mid-winter to early spring.

The Pratt daughters, Hilda and Elsie, often played in between the four large maple trees growing a few feet west of the present fence. Their father, Fenton, planted these trees, which provided a play area for his girls and their friends. He built a fence around the trees so the girls could play in a secluded space and to protect the young trees from the hungry sheep.

Fenton Pratt was a determined and innovative horticulturist. Not discouraged by the hot, dry, and windy weather of western Kansas, Pratt established an orchard and vineyard, (which would have been located to the south of where U.S. Highway 24 is today). Apples, apricots, cherries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, and grapes grew in this area. He irrigated his plants by piping water to the orchard from the concrete water tower east of the house. Today a grove of large cottonwoods marks this location. Fenton planted these cottonwoods to provide a windbreak around his beloved fruit trees, shrubs, and vines.