How to create stone staircase

Hi, i want to create a stone staircase using limestone or river rock. I would like for each step to be about 2 1/2 ft wide, 1 ft deep, and about 6-8 inches high. I would like to do it with one stone per step. Any ideas on how to go about this? I was thinking if I could get the stones I would just kinda level out a spot starting at the bottom, stick a stone in there, level out the next step up lay a stone in there and so on. no morter, sand, or any of that stuff. Just the stones and the dirt. Would this work? Where would I get the stones? And if i did get them delived to my house how would I move them from my driveway back to the hill where I am creating the staircase? Any help would really be appreciated.

How you go about it depends on how "steep" the grade is to your hillside. You sort of have to go "into" the walls of the hillside to stabilize the individual stones and keep them from slipping out of postion or collapsing when you walk on them.

Are there places around your property where you can harvest the stone w/o having to buy them ?

Just make sure you get thick enough stones that will take the weight of a person walking on them w/o cracking or splitting, and that the soil they are sitting on is compacted enough to hold them in place.

This can be time consuming, but be patient and do a little bit at a time.
There could be a lot of digging involved.

I would suggest the first step will be to go look at what is available to buy. A stone 2 1/2' x 1' x 6-8" is big and heavy. Harvesting something like that would be a big job and I would think very hard to find. Remember that where you get it will be someones property.

Moving it you will need lot's of muscle and help. Once you find it I would ask the people you are buying it from for suggestions on moving them.

I have never built steps, but I do know that there is a proper way and you need to investigate things like the proper height to make them easy to walk. Our summer home had stone steps when my parents purchased it. They were very hard to navigate, because whoever put them in had them at random heights and it was not fun to walk on them down to the lake. Even with a sturdy hand rail and being a young girl at the time. We finally had to replace them before someone got hurt.

We refer to our front yard as being "down in the hole". As you can see, from the second photo we needed a method to get back up to our driveway over the rip-rap. These steps were built by professionals and were secured with mortar. After watching them, my husband built the second steps in our back yard. (shown below -- I'm new at this and printed the last picture first). They were built on a gradual slope that wasn't as great as the rip-rap in front, however, he, too secured them with mortar. The "steps" are "steppers" and they are placed on other stones that are flat and several inches high. Since we live in AR with plenty of stones, it isn't hard to find the material to build these steps, however, you do need a strong person to move these stones!

Here is the second picture, which was built by the professionals --- Hope you can make sense out of this. One reason to use mortar to secure these steps is we have torrential rains here, and I'm afraid not securing them might cause them to wash, especially if they are on a steep slope.

Beautiful, JeanK!

Thanks, Julie! My husband had the steps in the rip-rap built for me after watching me climb up a couple of times -- decided the medical bills to patch me up if I fell would cost more than having the steps built!