ZBar/Spring Hill Ranch

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Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
A Glimpse of the
Historic Ranch Headquarters Area
How You Can Get Involved?

The Limestone Mansion Hidden
in the Hills

The vision of the Z Bar/Spring Hill Ranch began when Stephen F. Jones, a pioneer cattleman from the South, first came to Chase County in 1879. It was here, in the middle of the Flint Hills, that Mr. Jones found valuable wide-open pastures. The high quality grass was perfect for building up the cattle empire he started in Texas and Colorado. According to old settlers, Mr. Jones had "money sticking out of every pocket," and was determined to have one of the finest ranches in the county. From this dream the Z Bar, or as Mr. Jones named the property - the Spring Hill Ranch, rose magnificently from the rolling expanse of prairie. The stone house and ranch buildings were built on a hill overlooking Fox Creek. According to local legends twenty men worked day and night to complete the buildings -- each made of hand-cut native Cottonwood limestone from the nearby Emslie, Rettiger, & Company Quarry. From the distance, the buildings glimmered like marble palaces.

After buying the first piece of land that would eventually become the Z Bar/Spring Hill Ranch, Stephen F. Jones promptly hired 20 men to complete a huge barn, a Second Empire-style house, and many outbuildings. The noise, light, and commotion were enough to cause travelers crossing the prairie at night to mistake the ranch for Strong City! As you look at the house from the front, just as if you were a visitor in 1881, imagine how impressed you would be by this grand mansion. Doesn't it seem huge? This 11-room ranch house is a striking three-story structure whose mansard roof and dormer windows represent a unique example of Second Empire style of 19th-century architecture. The wooden front doors are massive and hand-carved. Within the house are two huge downstairs reception rooms with a curved stairway leading upstairs. Outside, a spring-fed fountain, currently filled with a rainbow of flowers, whispers of the parties from the past that graced the home. In 1887 the editor of the Strong City Independent wrote that the house "stands on a very prominent hill and can be seen for miles, either way. At a distance it could be readily taken for an old Scotch castle, with secret stairways and underground passages. It is a magnificent structure..." The National Register of Historic Places listed the house in 1971, one of the first such designations in Kansas. In February, 1997 the entire Z Bar/Sprint Hill Ranch was designated a National Historic Landmark by Interior Secretary, Burce Babbitt.

The Massive Barn and Outbuildings

Completed in the same year as the house, 1881, this 110-x-60-foot barn lacked being the biggest in Kansas by only 2 feet! The roof on the barn alone required 5,000 pounds of tin. Two ramps leading from the 2nd story ground-level allowed teams of horses to pull loaded wagons up to the granary on the third floor. The barn is so large that a skilled driver could turn the team and wagon in a complete circle while inside the barn and exit down the same ramp. Mr. Jones stabled his fine horses, dairy cattle, and occasionally hogs in the bottom floor of the barn. Two sets of stalls line the north and south walls on this level. Can you imagine cleaning all these stalls? The middle floor of the barn originally held farm equipment and hay. During the 1880's, ranchers kept cattle on the grass year round. Since our perennial grasses lose most of their nutrients to their roots during the winter, ranchers stored large amounts of hay for livestock survival during the harsh Kansas winters.

Mr. Jones stored grain and hay in the barn's third story. A double-headed windmill once adorned the top of the barn to furnish power for a pair of corn burrs, a corn sheller, a hay chopper, a root cutter, and an oil-cake crusher. Even before electricity, ranchers showed their ingenuity with machines such as these. The ranch complex boasts many other limestone outbuildings including a sod-roofed chicken house and a carriage house which shelters our horse-drawn buggy. These old buildings remind us of the pioneer's daily struggle to survive the prairie.

The Lower Fox Creek School

In 1881 Mr. Jones donated land for a new school just a mile north of the ranch house complex. District officials agreed that if the school should ever stop holding classes, the ownership of the building and land would revert to the ranch. The district built the Lower Fox Creek School in 1882 and began classes in September of the same year. The school averaged anywhere from one to 19 pupils from all grades for nearly 50 years. In 1929 the school was closed due to a lack of students. At that time the ownership reverted to the ranch. In 1968, 14 Garden Clubs in the Mid-East District of Kansas restored the school. Six years later it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. William Least Heat-Moon, noted author of PrairyErth has written of its "bell tower set so cleanly against the sky and the silhouette so archetypically native that it has become an emblem of prairie America." Some say the long prairie wind carries sounds of the old school bell, calling one last class to its empty desks.