Housing on the Plains
After 1863, settlement on the treeless Great Plains–the area including portions of modern-day Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Oklahoma–would have been impossible without the sod house. This sod house was photographed in the 1880s by Solomon Butcher of Nebraska. The soddie’s walls were built from blocks cut from the earth with a grasshopper plow and laid grass side down in rows up to 30 inches thick. Doors, windows and, when possible, the roof, were framed with precious planks brought by the settlers. There were advantages and disadvantages to living in a soddie. The dwellings were cool in summer and warm in winter, but leaking roofs were inevitable. Unwanted creatures were always a problem, as lamented by one anonymous homesteader in this poem:

How happy am I when I crawl into bed;

A rattlesnake hisses a tune at my head!

A gay little centipede, all without fear,

Crawls over my pillow and into my ear!

Photo: National Archives

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