Pratt Home & Cottonwood Ranch

Pratt Home and Cottonwood Ranch. . There are two markers, side by side. , The First Pratt Home , Abraham and Fent lived in a dugout along the river, approximately a quarter mile south of where you stand today. Later, in 1882, Tom Pratt joined his father and brother in Sheridan County. , The building of Cottonwood Ranch , In 1885 the Pratts built their one-room native stone house with a sod roof and earth floor. In the 1890s wings were added to the house and outbuildings and corral walls were built. The architecture of the buildings is not typical for this area but resembles that of farms in Yorkshire. Fent also planted cottonwood trees and the homesite was later called Cottonwood Ranch. , Settlement in Kansas , After the Civil War the West became a symbol of opportunity. A population boom occurred in Kansas, increasing more than tenfold between 1860 and 1890 to 1.4 million. , Abraham Pratt , Abraham Pratt of Yorkshire County, England, sold his liquor bottling business in 1878 and homesteaded 160 acres of land along the Solomon River is Sheridan County, Kansas. A couple of years later, he returned to Ripon, England, and convinced his sons, John Fenton (Fent) and Tom, to purchase 320 acres from the Kansas Pacific Railway.