The Allen-Watkins Residence and Watkins Family Farm Historic District

This Prairie-School-style home was built in 1913 and is now the center of Raymore's Watkins Family Farm Historic District. The Watkins family purchased the established farm in 1900 and utilized the land as part of an agricultural laboratory and demonstration farm for the University of Missouri Extension Service. Throughout the 20th century, this land was used to study and share progressive farming techniques, including ways to limit soil erosion. In addition to the Allen-Watkins home, the historic farm comprises two more residences, an abundance of barns, sheds, dams, wells, a milk house, chicken coops, and other structures built from the late 1860s to the late 1950s. Construction of the Allen-Watkins Residence involved a prefabricated kit provided by the Sears & Roebuck Company.

The farms of Cass County developed from subsistence farming prior to the Civil War to larger family farms that produced food for markets, including neighboring Kansas City, thanks to an abundance of rivers and springs. By the early twentieth century, the metro area stood as a leading market for such products as corn livestock, wheat, cut flowers, hemp, food processing, meatpacking, flour milling, and lumber milling. In Cass County, at the turn of the twentieth century, corn ranked highest in production of the crops cultivated in Cass County, with much of it used as stock feed. In 1899, Cass County farmers produced approximately 145,000 of the county's 449,000 acres for corn. Cass County also supported an abundance of cut-flower farmers as well as small orchards. During this period (1900), George Allen and his eldest son, Gene, established the Watkins Family Farm, where they raised oats, grass, and corn, tended a garden, laid fence lines, and used pre-existing farm buildings from earlier nineteenth-century residents of the site. 

The Allen-Watkins family built their house in 1913 upon the foundation of the original late nineteenth-century hall-and-parlor farmhouse. The family used plans and materials purchased from Sears and Roebuck Company, the Sears House Plan #227 ("The Castleton."). The Allen-Watkins Residence survives as an excellent example of a Prairie School style American four square plan farmhouse, a trendy design during the early twentieth century. 

Livestock farming, dairy, and meatpacking eventually became Kansas City's most well-known commodity by the early twentieth century. By 1920, Cass County supported nearly 12,000 milk cows (roughly twenty-five percent of the total cattle population). And, in 1923, the Allen-Watkins family expanded their fanning operation to include dairy products. The combination of agriculture, meatpacking, and food processing all grew concurrently with Kansas City's railroad traffic. But, as the twentieth century progressed, the use of trucks grew increasingly influential. Because Raymore and farms like the Watkins farm sat near Kansas City, a boom in road production arose during the 1910s and 1920s; farms sent many of their goods directly to Kansas City. Concurrently, the rise in gasoline-powered farm equipment profoundly impacted farming production. The Great Depression and Dust Bowl era of the 1930s and the associated bank closures forced many Kansas City area farms to close. The Watkins Farm withstood the challenging times and economic turmoil, taking advantage of federal programs, improved transportation arteries, and newly-built milk plants, hatcheries, and grain mills in such towns as Raymore and Pleasant Hill. 

A boost to the local ag-community arrived with the passage of the Smith-Lever Extension Act of 1914, which set up a federal-state extension service to forward the direct education of farmers with science-based knowledge. Colleges and universities, which had already offered agricultural courses. The University of Missouri Extension Service became an innovative leader in technical farming experiments and farmer support. The University of Missouri maintained county extension agents throughout the state, offering courses in all aspects of state-of-the-art farming. Additionally, they mailed thousands of pamphlets annually to keep farmers updated with everything from barn design to pest control. The University of Missouri also set up some of the first experimental plots to study soil erosion, which proved highly beneficial by the late 1930s. By 1937, Missouri and other states established soil conservation districts - cooperatives for developing and promoting conservation methods. At this time, the Watkins became increasingly involved with the University of Missouri Agricultural Extension Service and allowed their farm to serve as a demonstration farm for Extension Service programs such as terracing, waterway, and dam construction. 

In conclusion, the Allen-Watkins family existed as a family-owned operation for more than one hundred years, starting with their acquisition of the property in 1900. The historic land includes 180 acres of the original Allen-Watkins farmstead (and forty acres of the historic Williamson farmstead). The Watkins Family Farm played a significant role in the Kansas City and vicinity's farm-to-market economy and its food supply chain during the early to mid-twentieth century. The farm eventually operated as a demonstration farm for the University of Missouri Extension Service programs by the first half of the twentieth century. The buildings and structures in the district, including the Allen-Watkins home, reflect a distinct transition away from traditional nineteenth-century buildings and farming practices and toward purely functional designs. 

Davis, Kerry. "Registration Form: Watkins Farnilv Farm Historic District." National Register of Historic Places. mostateparks.com. 2007. https://mostateparks.com/sites/mostateparks/files/Watkins%20Family%20Farm%20HD.pdf.

Mallea, Amahia. A River in the City of Fountains: An Environmental History of Kansas City and the Missouri River. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2018.