Restoring a historic Spearfish home

SPEARFISH Though no one has lived there for at least a decade, the historic Johnston Ranch house (also known as the Walton Ranch house or Cundy house) on Upper Valley Road is undergoing a restoration and will once again act as a home for Spearfish residents soon.

Rachel Headley bought the three lots (about six-tenths of an acre) that include the house, barn, and outbuildings of the historic ranch, and since Dec. 26, shes been hard at work preparing the interior for renovation.

I cant tell you how many people have said that theyve driven by and stopped and really thought about how great it would be to do this house, but no one has, she said. Theres been a couple of attempts to remodel it. All have aborted early in the process.

Headley, who grew up in Brookings County and moved to Spearfish in 2008, started looking at lots with the thought of building a new home but wasnt finding anything that really felt right, so then she decided to look into homes that could be redone. When she saw these lots, and the potential for what the idyllic space could provide for her daughters childhood, she was hooked.

Im excited for the whole thing, in the sense of the property as a whole, Headley said. I have a 6 year old, and I grew up on a farm, so giving her a place that has a barn to snoop around in and bugs to catch and frogs to catch Thats the part I like.

Headley has been doing a lot of research to try to put the houses history in order, and different documents have conflicting information, making the details a bit fuzzy. From what shes found, it appears John Walton received a patent on the land in 1892, and in March of 1898, he sold the land to Ida Hall. Documents list either 1898 or 1900 as the date the house was built, and Headley has found newspapers from 1898 tucked between plaster behind the walls as crews have been preparing the house for the renovation. Shes guessing that Ida Hall built the house; in September of 1899, Ida divorced her husband, Edwin Shock Hall and sold him the land, and in 1907, he sold the land to Irvin G. King. In 1925, the land sold to William Johnston, and starting in 1927, the land passed back and forth between members of the Johnston family, with Louise Johnston taking ownership in 1958, before selling to her nephew, Philip Cundy, in 1975. In 2004, it was sold to developers, and at some point, the larger property that had been a ranch was broken into separate lots.

Though the houses surroundings have changed as new neighborhoods have grown up around it, the house itself is largely unchanged from its early days.

Many people have asked about the two front doors and two chimneys, unique features to a home that was never used as a duplex. Headley said shes heard several guesses about the features, but the most plausible seems to be that houses could be ordered out of catalogues, and some had the option for duplexes. When examining the doors, the north door had frosted glass and fancier design, and someone mentioned that that door would be used as the more formal parlor entrance, while the south door would have been used for more informal and everyday purposes.

Headley said that theres no central heating and basically no indoor plumbing; theres no bathroom in the main part of the house. A double-hole privy outside provided that service, and an indoor bathroom was later added in an addition to the houses rear. That addition will be torn down due to structural failure, replaced by a two-stall garage. The main floor has 9-foot ceilings, with 8-foot ceilings on the second floor, and there is a root cellar with a poured cement basement.

Headley is pleased that the house was never updated.

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Restoring a historic Spearfish home