This Sod House

Interior of one of the last remaining sod house located in The Badlands of South Dakota (author's photo)

I've always been fascinated by houses built in strange places or out of strange material. When I was in grade school a bunch of us got together daily in a vacant lot, and armed with shovels, we dug a large underground clubhouse. We carved tables and benches into the walls and hung out there every day...until the fire department came and caved in the whole thing before our horrified eyes (my father and grandfather were on the fire department, by the way).

Hence my interest in sod houses. Who and why would someone build a house out of sod?

In 1862 the Homestead Act was passed and so began the great Westward Expansion. For the cost of a filing fee, anyone could stake out 160 acres. All the new landowner had to do was farm and live on the land for five years and it was his or hers (By the way, twelve percent of homesteaders in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota were single women). People came from all over the world to grab their piece of America. What a deal! What could go wrong?

Homesteaders were to find Conditions on the prairies were extreme. Summers where the temperatures could reach 120 degrees. Winters so cold your livestock might die because their breath froze in their noses. Then there were the tornadoes, droughts, rain storms, and swarms of grasshoppers. Grass so tall mothers feared losing their children in the Sea of Grass.

And the treeless plains were not that giving. There was hardly a stick or stone to build a house, and did I mention the other requirement was that the homesteader had six months to build a house? What to do?

Early homesteaders followed the example of the Native Americans, who built their lodge houses out of sod. Special blades were fitted to plows to rip off the top layer of ground. The roots of the grasses were so deep, they made a loud ripping noise when pulled from the earth.

Living inside a cramped sod house and keeping clean must have been a challenge for these sisters 

The blocks of sod, called "Nebraska marble," were then cut into bricks to build walls. If the sod dried, it would crumble and be impossible to work with, so the homesteader could only dig up as much sod as he (or she) could work with. The moist bricks were stacked on one another so the roots continued to grow into the layer beneath it giving added strength to the structure. The typical dwelling constructed would be a simple one-room house.  A roof was made by layering branches, straw, and twigs across the top on which more sod was placed.

The sod proved a good insulator, keeping the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And a sod house was cheap, costing less than $5 to build. The area of bare earth left around the house once the sod was cleared acted as a protective shield, keeping varmints away from the dwelling.

The downside: the bare-earth practice kept some varmints outside the house, while bringing others in. There are stories of rattlesnakes coming out of their dens in the walls and heading up to the roof to sun themselves during the day. Mice, fleas, snakes, and insects, oh my! One woman "sodbuster" complained that there were so many rats around the house looking for corn, that she had to kick them out of the way each time she left the house.

And if insects and snakes falling on you weren't enough to put you off--and I'm put off at this point already--the sodbuster waged a constant war against dirt, because if you live in a house made of dirt....One settler complained she needed an umbrella in the house to keep dirt from falling on her while she prepared dinner. Canvas could be fixed across the ceiling to combat falling dirt, leaks, and insects. The floor was usually dirt as well, though the walls were often plastered or whitewashed. Sod houses required maintenance, and the threat of a roof collapsing was a reality.

Note in this old print the family taking their activities outside of the house

Windows could be installed for an expense, but the sod house was generally a dark, cramped space. Any activity such as sewing, socializing, or other tasks that could be taken outside, were. There wasn't much room for furniture, and so much like my childhood underground fort, tables and beds were carved into the walls.

Typically, a house made out of sod was seen as a temporary residence. Maybe a family would live in the one room "soddy" for seven years or so until they were able to gather together enough funds to build a wood frame house. But it could be made more habitable by adding wood slats for flooring and papering the walls.

Making a sod house a home by adding windows and papering walls

As cozy as the above picture is, I don't think it represents the norm. Scratching together a day to day existence as a homesteader must have been hard beyond anything most of us today can imagine: the isolation, the grueling work, battling the elements to only face the random follies of nature such as losing your crops to a swarm of grasshoppers as you sit in the comfort of your leaky, varmint-infested sod house.

Less than half the homesteaders withstood the test. I don't know if I would've made it, but it's hard to pit the modern me against a me that had been raised without the comforts I enjoy today. Still, I like to think I would have been one of the success stories. There are some cheerful accounts from optimistic sodbusters, and I wonder at their resilience.

So, what do you think? How would you and your family have fared living in a sod house?