The Long Journey Back
Prairie Homestead(1907)
By
Dorothy Polley and Ron Rings rud
It was an old family album and the picture was of two buildings connected by a kind of breezeway and insulated all around with sod blocks partway up the sides.
"Mother,. my husband said, "where and when were these pictures taken?
"Around 1907, n Myrt replied, "that is a picture of Uncle Fred Ford's wife, Grace Ringsrud Ford, and their close friends, the Walshs, all of Elk Point, S.D. out on their homestead near Interior, S.D.
She then explained about the two buildings. The two families staked a homestead claim on adjoining 160 acres and they built their houses side by side each on their own claim so that the wives could come out and live on it (as required by law) and the women would not be frightened or lonely. It took a year to prove up the homestead. This plan was especially good during the prairie winters. They had water wells dug and heated with wood and by this plan could keep each other company and the men would come out on weekends.
We had lived in the Black Hills for years and often talked of finding and visiting the area of the two homesteads. Finally, after my hustand retired the search began. He went to the Pennington County Registrar of Deeds and the story of the land began to unfold. The homesteads were located in Section 29, Township 2S, Range 17E. (see Diagram ). This is about 10 miles south of Quinn, S.D. and within two miles of the Badlands National Monument.
The registrars office tells a lot of the history of the land. We were surprised to learn that in 1909 Fred Ford lost his land to tax-es of only $19.73. A Chicago man bought it. The Walshs kept their land until 1936 when Mr. Walsh died and his widow sold~-their land to the U.S. Govt. for 320.00. It is still Federal grassland. At the county office you can follow ownership right up to the present. We found that the present owner of the part of Section 29 that Uncle Fred Ford owned is Virgil Horton.
Now we began to get ready for the journey back. We called the Horton Ranch and told him of our search and our desire to come out and just see if we could find where it had been. He very cordially invited us to come and wanted also to see the pictures we had of the homestead that was on part of his land.
Armed with our pictures and our descriptions of the area we drove down on a T,hurs day. At the Horton Hanch, Mr. Horton took us in his pick-up through two large grasslands to an area where they might have had a place. They determine this by low places where a cave might have been or a water well. That is because to keep food cool every homestead seemed to have a cave nearby. It was a hot day on the prairie and the only observers of our wandering about out there were some cows busy munching the good buffalo grass of the ranch. Finding,three places that looked like caves or wells had been dug, we felt that was it and tried to reconstruct in our minds the makoup of the homestead. (see diagram ).
We could find no old stoves or pieces of homes or any other evidence of where they stayed that year. Thus ended our search for family roots out on the South Dakota prairies. We feel that the pictures also tell quite a story of that long ago Ford and Walsh ranch.
Imagine yourself standing on the prairie with grassland as far as the eye can see and pioneering out there--two women alone--with the men coming out from time to time. I had tumbled thoughts out there as to whether I ever could have been a pioneer and carried water and chopped wood and had to go to Interior or Quinn probably on horsekack for supplies.
We left for home with thoughts of years ago going through our heads and an appreciation of what it meant to be a pioneer.