Our Story
As a fifth-generation steward of the land, I am nonetheless humbled by its history. This farmland is a likely site of native American life. Ancient tools found were catalogued and dated between 8,000 and 13,000 years old by Kansas University archaeologists. The Pawnee Indian people inhabited the area prior to settlement by my ancestors and others.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was signed by President Franklin Pierce in 1854, and more than a decade later in the Civil War’s aftermath, my ancestors and other settlers purchased land and established farms in North Central Kansas. The survey of these land parcels began at the intersection of the 6th Principal Meridian and the 40th Parallel (the Kansas-Nebraska border). That point is at the northeast corner of the original Cossaart farm.
The Rock Island Railroad was built in 1880 and played an integral part of western American history. It represents the southern border of one of the tracts. Abandoned since the 1980’s, the railbed still serves as a wildlife buffer and terrace to control erosion from adjacent cropland.
These acres of Cossaart land have survived the hardships of the pioneers, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and near-bankruptcy during the farm crisis of the 1980’s. With the kind cooperation of the local banker and a twenty-year dental career, insolvency has been avoided and the land remains in family hands.