Riley Rankin – CCCHS Hall of Fame inductee for 2025 – began collecting Indian artifacts as a child. From ages 7 to 18 – years 1958 to 1972 – he collected more than 1,500 perfect artifacts, dating back 5,000 years. The collection includes sandstone abraders, arrowheads, knives, tomahawks, mallets, scrapers, Obsidian Knife, broken pottery pieces, and more.
Pieces of the collection have been on display in the Clay County Courthouse since 2009 when they were dedicated during Piotique.
Taught by older family members, Rankin also reviewed artifacts at Kansas Historical Museum, often discussing with its founder, Floyd Schultz. From there, Rankin said he spent hours walking creek grounds and fields, especially after heavy rains. He most often covered Native American camp sites along Five Creeks, the Republican River, and burial mounds in the surrounding hills.
In 2007, he reached out to Brad Logan, PhD, CCCHS class of 1970, who was then working as a Professor of Archaeology at K-State. Notably, Logan was already familiar with the area. Not from being a Clay County native, but through his wife, Lauren Ritterbush, PhD, who remains an archeology professor at K-State today. Her predecessor, Patricia O’Brien, PhD, collected and studied some of the same areas Rankin had covered.
To further learn about the finds, Logan, Ritterbush, and Rankin drove the areas while the latter explained where he found pieces. He had also thoroughly documented what he had found at each location.
“The way he collected when he was very young was close to being professional,” Logan said. “That really helped us a lot.”
From there, Logan and Rankin went to County Commissioners to gain approval of displaying the items locally.
“He had the right idea,” Logan said. “He wanted to leave it to the County, which is a great idea because it puts the collection close to the areas where he collected them. I was fully on board with it.”
The Commissioners agreed and had a display case made for the Courthouse. From there, Logan had his archaeology students analyze and catalog the collection. In addition, Logan and a student each wrote studies that were published on the artifacts.
“The items are all prehistoric, they’re from citizens of the county who lived there thousands of years before Americans did,” he said. “I picked the artifacts that had the most to tell viewers.”
Logan created the display for the Courthouse, writing cards and information with each piece. In total, about 15% of the items are displayed, with the remainder in storage.
In total, the collection includes 109 arrow points, 149 complete bifaces and another 93 fragments, 301 scrapers, 540 debitages, for a total of 1,762 items and 52,307.1 grams in mass.
The full display is available in the Clay County Courthouse. More pictures are available at KCLYradio.com.
