Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve - Virtual Tour Ranch House Spring Room (U.S. National Park Service)

"Pioneers looked for a spring and built their homes near it. It kept their thirst (and that of their animals) satisfied and their food from spoiling. It was the only refrigeration known for years. Usually a house or building was built over the spring out of rock and a tree was planted near the door. A stone trough was built in the spring house. Through it ran cold, slow flowing spring water. Earthenware crocks of milk were placed, neck deep, in the water. It was always cool in the spring house, even in the warmest of days. A gourd dipper hung in the spring house so men coming in from the hot field could stop for a draft of cold water. The dog quenched his thirst from the overflow at the back of the spring house and a flock of ducks noisily investigated the trickling stream for tidbits. Watercress grew in the shallows." (Taken from The Good Old Days, The Spring House, R.J. McGinnis, F. & W. Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, page 76.)

This building is the curing house. Underneath is the spring room. If you look to the far right in the photo, you will see the roof of the outside entrance to the spring room.
Photo showing the original entrance to the spring room. Sometime during his occupancy, Jones installed a tunnel from the old kitchen to the spring room. The tunnel can be seen in the left photo below.	Photo above shows the interior side of the door to the spring room. The front of this door is in the left photo. This was the original entrance and exit to and from the spring room.

Modern Refrigeration - 1880s Style

Photo showing the interior tunnel entrance leading from the original kitchen to the spring room. The screen door (black, narrow object) was added by Erma Slabaugh, to check for snakes before entering the tunnel. The shower was added for ranchhands/cowboys to clean
up before the noon meal. One
of the shower heads can be seen directly to the left of
the lightbulb.

Photo of the spring room interior. The view is looking back into the tunnel.
Notice the crock sitting in the trough.

Spring water was piped through the kitchen, down the tunnel, and into the spring room trough. It encircled the room interior via the trough, then collected in another cistern located to the east of the spring room.

Underground spring water is very cool, so the spring house was similar to our walk-in refrigerators of today.

No water runs into the spring room today, so the temperature is from the room's insulation. Even in the hot summers, the room is still much cooler than outside.

Thermometer in the spring room.

This thermometer measures the constant temperature of the spring room. It stays at a constant cool temperature, due to the cold spring water that would run into the trough. The Jones' would keep their homemade butter, cheese, milk, and any other food stuffs in this room. This was modern refrigeration for the time and is still used today in some parts of the country.

This photo was taken in 1935.
This original floor was soil and stone.
Today it is concrete.