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Donna's
Doorways
Renovation
Project |
The BigEagle-Jones Ranch Site
A Plea for Restoration
by
Donna C. Jones-Flood
For those who can remember some of the lyrics to the song,
from the broadway musical, "South Pacific," that go
something like,
"You've got to have a dream,
If you don't have a dream,
How you gone' to make a dream come true?",
this is where we are now, singing a song of dreaming,
to restore this once beautiful home site of
Dennis Homer Flynn Jones and his wife,
Bertha (Big Eagle) Jones.
Wedding Day, March 30, 1920
Daughter of Harry & Elsie (Olohokawalla) Big Eagle,
Granddaughter of Chief Olohokawalla, Osage
(see larger photo farther below)
The old ranch house was built in 1920,
by Paul Johnson, who was from out of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
He was a master builder.
The rock porch was added in 1942,
by Bert Peters, with the help of my father, Lee Otis Jones.
The rock holds fossils of an ancient time,
suggesting this land was covered by an ocean at one time.
The rock is Limestone taken from this area.
The floor of the porch was taken from the Cotting Ranch,
which is about fifteen miles from there.
The ranch ruins
are about ten miles from the Chapman Barnard Ranch,
which is now called the "Tallgrass Prairie
Preserve."
The ripples in the rock of the floor,
tell that they were taken from a stream bed.
The house
had a steel link fence around it, but that has been partially
removed.
The West side of this house was planted with Rose of Sharon.
There were lovely Bridal Wreath bushes in the front.
Early on, trees were scarce, but with the change in the
ecology,
due to the stone wall my father built,
the place is quite overgrown with flora.
A Climbing Rose,
of which a sprig remained in 1999, grew over the front gate.
This home was host to the heirs of the State of Georgia's
Joneses,
and liken-unto a "Gone With The Wind" era
out of Jonesboro and Jones County there.
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Photo of the Bride
March 30, 1920
~ Bertha Big Eagle ~
Granddaughter of Chief Olohokawalla, Osage
(note house in background)
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