Blankenship Cowchip House and Pipe Raymond Vaneless Windmill -- Ranching Heritage Center, Lubbock TX - Signs of History on Waymarking.com

Cowchip Houses are a thing -- and that's no BS! (Mandatory pun)

The Blankenship Cowchip House, donated to the Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock TX by Doyle Thornhill in memory of her parents. There is no snark at all intended in this donation of a unique and vital structure to the ranching Heritage Center. It's not crappy commentary at all (another mandatory pun).

Rather, this donation preserves a utilitarian and widely-used structure of the sort that usually get torn down and discarded, given their purpose.

Cowchips were valuable commodities on plains ranches, where they could be used for fuel and fertilizer.

This humble cowchip house was gifted to the National Ranching Heritage center in 1986. The plaque reads as follows:

"THE BLANKENSHIP LAZY IA COWCHIP HOUSE
(circa) 1907
Donated by Doyle Thornhill in memory of her parents
A. W. & MARY BLANKENSHIP
1986"

An interpretive sign nearby reads as follows:

"BLANKENSHIP COWCHIP HOUSE
1907

This structure stored dried cow manure, called cowchips. It was the job of children and ranch families to collect the material and store it where it would stay dry. On the barren plains, the material was burned for heat and cooking where wood was not a resource. Although an easily obtained and abundant fuel source, cow chips left much ash when burned.

PIPE RAYMOND VANELESS WINDMILL
C. 1918

One of the most frequently seen vaneless mills on the Great Plains, this windmill was moved to the NRHC from Ulysses, Kansas. The blades of this mill face away from the wind and fold back as when speed increases. The complexity of the machine required frequent repair and parts replacement."

Group that erected the marker: Ranching Heritage Center URL of a web site with more information about the history mentioned on the sign: [Web Link] Address of where the marker is located. Approximate if necessary: 3121 4th St Lubbock, TX

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Date Logged Log   08/06/2016 Benchmark Blasterz visited it