Fenton Pratt became a very successful sheep rancher, each year shipping thousands of pounds of wool to markets in St. Louis and Philadelphia. In addition to his ranching business, he served as a local financier, accepting livestock, farm implements and land as collateral against loans he made to dozens of people in the area. In the 1880s and 1890s he constructed a stone house and buildings, then planted many cottonwood trees and named his home Cottonwood Ranch. In 1888 he brought his fiancée Jennie Elizabeth from England to the plains of Kansas.
Together they developed a home that included the ranch house, a bath house, wash house, bunkhouse, stable, shearing sheds and other outbuildings. Many of the buildings, as well as much of the fencing, were made of native Ogallalah Formation stone, quarried from Pratt’s timber claim acreage adjacent to the sheep ranch. The site for the ranch had been chosen carefully in order to have a good natural water supply. In 1903, 21 springs were within a half-mile radius of Cottonwood ranch. One of the springs provided water for the house through an underground pipe system, used as a water source until 1972. A water tower was built to serve as a storage cistern that provided water to Fenton’s beloved orchard, vineyard and lawn. A determined horticulturalist, he succeeded in raising many fruits, grapes and berries in the extreme climate of Western Kansas. Like many immigrants, the Pratts brought with them cultural elements of their native country. The buildings of the ranch were laid out in a ‘Yorkshire pattern’, a linear design that served to create a corral with the outbuilding’s walls. The bath house was built in a two room style common to the 19th century English countryside.
An icehouse and a ballfield were two elements of Cottonwood Ranch that were not seen on other homesteads. Built in the style of a dugout or cellar, the icehouse had stone walls and a heavy wooden roof that helped keep the ice, hauled in the winter from the frozen Solomon River. The blocks, packed in straw, were used as a means of refrigeration during the hotter months. Near the icehouse was an area of level ground that served as a baseball field, complete with a backstop. The community used the ball diamond well into the 1950s.
Fenton and Jennie Elizabeth Pratt had two daughters, Hilda and Elsie. Fenton died in 1937. After the death of his wife in 1959, Hilda, who had never married, lived alone at the ranch. She died in 1980, and in 1982 the State of Kansas purchased approximately 23 acres of the original John Fenton Pratt ranch. Today the Kansas State Historical Society administers the property as one of the state’s last surviving legacies of English settlement in Kansas. Five of the site’s six original stone buildings have been preserved, and are open to the public. Cottonwood Ranch is located on U.S. 24 one-half mile west of Studley, Kansas, north of Interstate 70.
Information for this story was provided by the Kansas State Historical Society. For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Debra Bolton in Manhattan Kansas.
High Plains History is a production of High Plains Public Radio.
