Cronkhite Ranch House
N of Watonga off OK 51A, Watonga, OKInitially a part of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation, what is now Blaine County, Oklahoma, was opened to white settlement in a famous land run in 1892. Because the canyon country in the western portion of the county was unsuitable for farming, that region was utilized principally for cattle ranching. Allotments reserved for the Indians were frequently located in that area as well. White ranchers generally entered one 160 acre tract according to the Homestead Laws, built a home on that tract, and then put an extensive cattle range together by leasing surrounding Indian allotments. This was the pattern followed by Will Cronkhite. Thus his Ranch House is suggestive of the settlement and agriculture patterns typical at the turn of the century in western Oklahoma. Moreover, it is the only remaining imposing structure associated with the ranching industry dating from that era in Blaine County.
The Cronkhite Ranch House is significant architecturally not because of its design as much as its method of and materials used in its construction. To the north of the house lies one of the purest deposits of gypsum in the United States. Will Cronkhite and his brothers pioneered in the exploitation of the mineral in 1904 by establishing a mill and quarry some two miles northeast of the house site. Material from the mill formed the cement blocks from which the house was fashioned. Only one other house is known to be constructed from similar materials, and it is located several miles south in the community of Watonga. The Cronkhite House, therefore, is a prime example of early inhabitants of a region using uniquely local materials for construction purposes.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.