The Native Stone Fences

The long limestone walls running across this Flint Hills country tell the story of how the open range came to an end. Kansas moved to abolish the free range, requiring landowners to fence their crops against roaming cattle. Fencing was a heavy burden for settlers, and stone was close at hand.

Here in Wabaunsee County, the ground itself supplied the material. Flat slabs of limestone lay everywhere, and pioneers stacked them carefully into miles of dry stone walls, no mortar, just patience and a good eye. Many of those fences still stand a century and a half later, marking old property lines across the county.

They are monuments to backbreaking labor and to the moment the wild prairie was finally divided and tamed.