Tour, part 4

Fence

The woven wire fence that encloses much of the yard was erected in 1923. In the 1890s Fenton Pratt laid the gray rocks that form the base of the fence in front of the house. These rocks come from the Ogallalah Formation. About one-half of the house walls are built of stones that come from the Ogallala Formation.

Rural yard fences are both decorative and useful as garden trellises. And, in addition to confining children and pets, fences keep sheep, horses, and other farm animals away from the house and out of the lawn.

Built sometime after 1900, the concrete water tower (at the right edge of the picture) served as a water storage tank. The water was pumped into the tank by a windmill. The structure did not supply water into the house. Pipes carried water from this tower to an orchard and vineyard once located in the grove of trees south of the present highway. The tower also supplied water to an underground pipeline for watering the law.

Like most women of rural households, the Pratt women may have designated one day a week as "washday." Most houses lacked the space for the equipment and facilities used in washing clothes. During the summer doing laundry could produce enough heat and humidity to make the house insufferably hot. So many rural homes had a separate building, a washhouse, for this chore.

This washhouse is the only stone structure on the site that was built on a foundation. The foundation walls form an underlying cellar. The walls of the structure are made of gray Ogallalah Formation rocks. The corner stones, lintels, and windows sills are built with blocks cut from the Smoky Hill Chalk member of the Niobrara Formation. Some portions of the house are also made of these pale yellow and pink Smoky Hill Chalk stones.

Notice that the south faces of the three outbuildings and adjoining walls were arranged in a line. With this placement the walls of the buildings also served as walls for the corral. This linear pattern, although not typical of farmsteads in Kansas, is common in the Pratts' home region of Yorkshire, England. Like many immigrants, the Pratts brought to western Kansas some cultural elements of their "old country." The stones for these buildings and fences were quarried from Fenton Pratt's timber claim a mile and one-half northwest. On delivery at Cottonwood Ranch, the quarrymen received from four to five dollars per cord.

A large stone building once stood to the east (far right). What remains is only ground indentations and stone rubble left by archeologists. The fifty-seven-feet long and twenty-one feet-wide building fell victim to a tornado. The twister struck the Cottonwood Ranch in 1911, leaving this building without a roof. At the time Fenton Pratt's younger brother, Tom, was building onto his home located about one-half mile west. Tom "recycled" most of the stones from this building into his new addition. A 1990 archeological investigation determined that this building was used for both storage and an animal shelter.

Each spring the Pratts hired laborers to clip the fleeces that the sheep had grown since the last shearing. These shearers, who often did not lived in the neighborhood, slept in the western half of this building (far right). Occasionally during lambing time in April, sheepherders, who were paid forty cents a day, also used this room for their sleeping quarters. The eastern half of the building was used for storage.

A sod building once stood on this site. It was replaced in the early 1890s when Fenton Pratt constructed the stone outbuildings and connecting fences. The eastern half of the building contained space for eight horses. Fenton used the western half as a farm shop and for tool storage. Here he made items needed on the farm and repaired implements by blacksmithing and woodworking.