One day while driving a farm tractor cultivating in a field close to the Smokey River Valley

In southern Logan county of mid-western Kansas, it was there that I came upon the biggest surprise of my life. The tractor or farmland or equipment did not belong to me. I was a fill-in operator for my son Todd when he needed me, because I had 50 years of experience in farming. The landowner was my son's father-in-law. They both knew I always enjoyed running a tractor or a combine ever since my dad taught me when I was just a kid. I was born in the 1930s, called the Dust Bowl Years and also the Great Depression.

This piece of farmland I had never farmed before. It was my first time seeing the piece of land that close. It was the last piece of cultivated farmland next to the river and valley, about 300 feet below. So it was a new adventure for me. The view and scenery of the Smokey River Valley was very fantastic that early spring day. Just to look at the river valley with trees of all shapes and sizes, cattle grazing the grassland approaching three hundred feet below the ground I was to farm. I could see a long view both up and down the valley which gave me more pleasure.

The first round around the field in the tractor, you had to be sure to stay within the legal boundaries and not to hit the fence posts with the implement the tractor was pulling to cultivate the ground, or you would have some major problems.

The second time around the field, my eyes were more free to notice my surroundings and observe the scenery I had never seen. What a pleasure it was to see. While going the second time around the field, I noticed the sweeps of the implement were bringing up odd-looking pieces of rock to the surface in a small given area, and on the third round at the same location, I saw a few sparkles of sun glitters glittering off small objects where the small rocks were laying.

At this point, I decided to stop the tractor and investigate. I guess I did this because when I was a young boy, I always liked to explore things and the countryside. Crawling down off the tractor, I began to walk around looking at some of the different shaped rocks and pieces of broken glass, which helped me decide why I was seeing sparkles from the sun rays. That's when I began to realize there used to be an old rock house or an early-day homestead, or old early-day schoolhouse, located there. It was normal during the early days of homesteaders to use chock rocks to build their homes because it was easy to find along the Smoky Hill River. They could cut and shape the size of the rock they needed. Also, in the early homestead days, there was a wagon trail known as the Butterfield Overland Trail, which was also used by the cavalry to reach the forts that protected armed soldiers and civilians from Indians.