Traveling from Crawford County, Indiana, Mrs. Mary Collingswood, a widow with nine children in tow, persevered over hundreds of miles of uncharted terrain with two prairie schooners. When she reached this area of Kansas in 1872, no wonder she said , "My, what a pretty prairie!" The land was flat and rock-free, and she could commence farming with very little preamble. Collingswood remembered her remark when her home , which had become a stagecoach stop, required a name. Thus, the spot became Pretty Prairie.
This little town is part of Reno County, resting in the Arkansas River Basin, which has long provided fertile soil for farming. Reno County has always been fairly quiet , from the times when C.C. Hutchinson, a founding father and Baptist minister, stipulated that any lots he sold would revert back to him if the owners permitted the sale or consumption of alcohol on the premises. Many Amish and Mennonites also settled in Reno County early on, and are still heavily represented in the area today.
In the late 1800s, Ben Blanchard came to Reno County looking for oil, but instead discovered salt. He scoffed at it, but others started successful businesses mining the mineral, pumping water into the wells and pumping it back out again, salt-laden and ready for dehydration. In 1923, Emerson Carey started to mine the salt by digging and cutting out huge chunks. More than 75 years later, just this year, the Reno County Historical Society and the modern-day Hutchinson Salt Company and Underground Vaults and Storage signed a lease to create an underground museum. Planned 650 feet below ground, the museum will tell the story of the salt industry in the United States , and should be open for tours and demonstrations in 2004.
Albright Farmhouse
In 1980, Darryl Albright brought his family from Topeka to Pretty Prairie, to live on the farm where he was raised. Built in 1909, the barn and house on the expansive property were in drastic need of repair and renovation by the time Albright's parents gave him the homestead. Everyone--family and numerous friends--joined forces to begin scraping, repainting, and otherwise remodeling these edifices of local history.
Recent upgrades have included the kitchen, the windows, an upstairs bedroom and the interior woodwork. The original kitchen cupboards were discovered in the wash house, so they were stripped, repaired and reinstalled in the restored home. Today , the acreage where Darryl grew up bustles with other Albrights--a dozen adults and six children.
The Albright family has turned its attention to another project: preservation of the old Civic Theatre, located in the small downtown section of Pretty Prairie. Darryl manages the operation while other members of the clan serve up popcorn and run the projector every Friday and Saturday night. Resurrected, the theater once again has been put it to the use for which it was intended. Members of the community are grateful for this historic treasure, and show their support by regularly attending the family-run, renovated theater.
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