After the Civil War, the West became a symbol of opportunity, and Kansas experienced a population boom that increased more than tenfold between 1860 and 1890 to 1.4 million. Abraham Pratt of Yorkshire County, England, sold his liquor bottling business in 1878 and homesteaded 160 acres of land along the Solomon River in Sheridan County, Kansas. A couple of years later, he returned to Ripon, England, and convinced his sons, John Fenton, known as Fent, and Tom, to purchase 320 acres from the Kansas Pacific Railway. Abraham and Fent first lived in a dugout along the river about a quarter mile south of this site, and Tom joined his father and brother in Sheridan County in 1882. In 1885 the Pratts built a one-room native stone house with a sod roof and earth floor, and in the 1890s they added wings to the house and built outbuildings and corral walls. The buildings were not typical for the area but resembled farms in Yorkshire, and Fent planted cottonwood trees that led the homesite to be called Cottonwood Ranch.