After its completion, ranch owner Stephen F. Jones learned that his Spring Hill barn was one of the largest barns in Kansas at the time. Like most ranch buildings, it was built of limestone, the foundation of the Flint Hills prairie. Its three stories contained stalls and feed and grain storage for a large-scale, year-round ranch operation. A team and wagon could enter the upper level by ramp, unload, and turn around inside to leave. The structure originally had a tin roof and a massive double-header windmill with thirty-foot blades. Using the prairie wind, the windmill was meant to power a pair of corn burrs, a corn sheller, hay chopper, root cutter, and an oil-cake crusher, with the equivalent of a twelve-horsepower engine. According to reports, vibrations from its enormous wingspan led to the windmill's removal after only a few years. On December 24, 1881, the Strong City Independent reported that five thousand pounds of tin would be needed to cover the mammoth barn of S.F. Jones on Fox Creek and that tinners were laying it on.