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Topic: Sod house

	AllRefer.com - sod house (Architecture) - Encyclopedia
		Sod houses were common in the frontier days on the western plains of the United States, where wood and stone were scarce.
		The sod, turned by the plow and held together by roots, was lifted in strips and usually cut in 3-ft (1-m) lengths (sods).
		Sod walls were fire- and windproof and good insulators, but they permitted only small window openings.
	reference.allrefer.com /encyclopedia/S/sodhouse.html (225 words)

	Sod - Unipedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		A sod is grass turf and the part of the soil beneath it held together by the roots, or a piece of this material.
		Sod has occasionally been cut out in blocks to use as a building material, especially in grasslands where grass is plentiful and few other materials are available.
		Sod houses have the advantages of being very cheap, and well insulated, so that they are cool in summer and warm in winter.
	www.unipedia.info /Sod.html (457 words)

	Inquiry Activity 1 : Resource Card A : A Rather Pretentious Sod House
		These structures were of various sizes but a rather pretentious sod house followed a common building plan of sixteen feet wide and twenty feet long.
		The sod bricks were made by turning over furrows on about half an acre of ground where the sod was thickest and strongest.
		If the rain came from the north, the north side of the house leaked, and it was necessary to move everything to the south side; if from the south, a move had to be made again.
	lcweb2.loc.gov /learn/educators/workshop/amerwest/sod.html (1130 words)

	Pioneer Camera
		The exterior of Elling Ohnstad's sod house, in Fairdale, North Dakota, on June 24, 1932, leaves a lot to be desired.
		John Bakken was the son of Norwegian immigrants, who homesteaded and built a sod house in Milton in 1896.
		This sod house was used as the basis for the design of the Homestead Act Commemorative Stamp in 1962.
	www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu /ndirs/exhibitions/pioneer/camera/sod.htm (526 words)

	Museums (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		The sod house was used by the McCully family from 1894 to 1909, when a large, two-story frame house was built immediately west of the sod house.
		This progression from dug-out to sod house to frame house was typical for the settlers of the area.
		Sod houses were cool in summer and easy to heat in winter.
	www.greatsaltplains.com /museums.htm (849 words)

	Sod Houses
		Morland, Kansas, Nov. 7 -- One of the few remaining sod houses in Kansas located near this Graham County town in the northwestern part of the state is slowly being worn away by the ravages of nature.
		Hoped to Preserve It In May of this year the Hill City Chamber of Commerce leased the sod house and a plot of ground surrounding it from Fay Kline with the intent of preserving it as a historical monument.
		Should the old sod house wear away, however, this county will still not be without a structure of sod as A. Sanger of Morland is now building such a structure adjacent to an irrigation lake he recently completed one mile north of town.
	www.geocities.com /RainForest/Vines/5320/sod/sod.html (575 words)

	Sod Houses (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Sod houses (and by sod we mean cut-sod, not the rammed-earth, puddled earth, or earthen-brick techniques common to eastern European immigrants) did not figure as prominently in the settlement history of the North Dakota plains as in many other provinces of the plains.
		This sod house in southwest Bowman County is in an advanced state of disintegration, but it obviously was occupied until the middle of this century.
		The sod walls are collapsing on all sides--which is to be expected, as the exterior stucco was a thin layer applied directly to the sods, providing little stabilization.
	www.plainsfolk.com /bowman/sod.htm (556 words)

	Soddies -- Wyoming Tales and Trails
		The sod would be cut from the prairie into slabs approximately 2 feet long, one foot wide, and 6 inches thick, which would be stacked grass side down to form the walls.
		Additionally, sod was used as a building material in an early form of building known as a "shoddie," in which upright logs or boards would be chinked with sod.
		The frequency with which sod was used for buildings is indicated by the fact that it has been estimated that in the United States and Canada during the period 1903-1913 there were some 1,000,000 sod buildings in use.
	www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com /soddies.html (1235 words)

	Laura Ingalls Wilder at the Hoover Library-Museum--De Smet Sod House
		Sod houses were constructed from the prairie soil.
		A sod house was about fourteen feet by sixteen feet with walls four feet thick.
		Sod houses were cool in summer and warm in winter.
	hoover.archives.gov /LIW/DeSmet/desmet_ingallsclaim-soddy.html (286 words)

	Plains Folk: Sod Houses and Social Structures (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		I had asked Bernice Larson, who raised her family in a sod house in North Dakota's Bowman County in the 1940s and 1950s, what it was like to live in a sod house in the middle of the 20th century.
		Ordinarily we think of sod houses as temporary expedients, dwellings laid up to fill residence requirements for homesteads, then replaced with proper frame houses when railroads and sales of the first crops made lumber available.
		It may be that sod had its environmental advantages, but recollection of those physical facts is wrapped up with remembrance of the social situation of generations past—a lot of kids around, dances, school events and most of all, gatherings of family and neighbors in the house.
	www.ext.nodak.edu /extnews/newsrelease/1999/040199/20plains.htm (568 words)

	LASR - Leisure And Sport Review - Travel, Tourism and Recreation on the Internet
		The sod house was built with buffalo grass sod that grew about a mile north of his home site.
		The floor in the sod house was originally dirt, but in 1895 a wood floor was installed.
		The sod house was used by the McCully family from 1894 to 1909, when a large, two-story frame house was built immediately west of the sod house and the soddy then was then used for storage until 1963.
	www.lasr.net /pages/county.php?County_ID=OK0601&Attraction_ID=OK0601001a001 (427 words)

	There are no Renters Here: Homesteading in a Sod House
		To cut the sod, settlers used a tool called a cutting plow, which had a set of adjustable rods to cut the sod into rows about three to six inches thick and at least a foot wide.
		Often families covered the sod house walls with muslin or whitewash to try and keep the dirt out of the living and cooking areas.
		A wide range of sod house construction meant that some lived in crude dugouts while others built two-story sod houses complete with glass windows and decorated in style.
	www.museumoftheamericanwest.org /explore/exhibits/sod/daily.html (1440 words)

	page2
		In both periods people turned to the sod house because it was extremely inexpensive to build and took advantage of the materials under foot: the land.
		In Nebraska the sod was cut in the bottomland areas where the soil and vegetation were thicker, making for a better packing "brick." A sod cutter was used to harvest the sod: it flipped over a strip of sod approximately eighteen to twenty-four inches wide which was then cut into "brick" size lengths.
		The sod bricks were stacked in alternating fashion with grass side down and laid two bricks thick, flaking the walls up to two feet thick- -more in some areas of the country.
	www.nbm.org /blueprints/90s/summer90/page5/page5.htm (1182 words)

	Oklahoma Prairie Country
		Sod slabs were usually one foot wide and two or three feet long.
		Sod houses generally consisted of one room with divisions made by hanging blankets.
		Its purpose is to preserve and exhibit an original sod house built in 1894 by Marshal McCullyl.
	www.okprairie.com /Prairie.htm (605 words)

	This is a letter from my father, Robert Orloff Dragoo to my son, Thomas Kerns, grade 5 (1966) for a school project (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		When the first layer of sod was down it was trimmed exactly 2 feet in length using a 2 x 4 to trim the sods, leaving a straight, clean-cut wall.
		Each sod, after the first layer, was placed over the joint made by the sods underneath; at the corners, one layer was laid in one direction in one layer and in the other direction in the layer above.
		On the house I built, I put heavy beams across to support the weight, the main one with a truss, put on rafters, boards on the rafters, tarpaper on the boards, then about three inches of the stickiest, gumbo-iest clay I could find.
	members.tripod.com /~lilyk/d_Sod.html (1107 words)

	American Sod Houses (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Sod Houses are small houses with walls built of stacked layers of uniformly cut turf.
		The individual bricks of sod are held together by the thick network of roots that made preparing fields for planting very difficult.
		Sod was cut with very special plows or by hand, with an ax or shovel.
	www.rrcnet.org /~historic/sodhist.htm (111 words)

	Traditional Houses: SEMI-SUBTERRANEAN SOD HOUSES
		These houses had two entrances—one for the summer months and one for the winter months —and a window cover of whale or walrus stomach membrane, generally at the center of the roof.
		Sod houses were quite adequate to withstand the cold, harsh climate of western Alaska, but they had no heating system—so people kept warm inside by wearing adequate clothing.
		Sod houses had to be built in good, dry spots, because they were partly underground.
	www.alaskool.org /projects/Chevak/chevak/LessonIII.html (5836 words)

	Building Sod Houses (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Students should be given the same materials as the previous day and continue building the walls of their sod houses.
		The criteria used to assess the Sod Houses are based on a 3 point scale with three components: Appearance of soddy is neat, The structure is sturdy, complete, and has all parts, (four walls, door, roof), and the student worked well during construction.
		Have students leave the roof off the top of the sod house and build furniture out of popsicle sticks and other materials that would replicate the type of furniture that would be in a sod house.
	www.lehigh.edu /~infolios/kelly/buildingsod.html (600 words)

	A New Home
		A house made of logs or dirt is odd and so worthy of note; deciding where to place your bed is an activity that was as much a part of New York as it was of North Dakota, and so it was not recorded.
		The sod was cut from the open prairie in the short-grass country where the roots of the buffalo grass are of such a fibrous nature that they penetrate the soil so compactly that the sod can scarcely be torn apart but must be cut.
		The main house was substantially built of logs with portholes in all sides, through which many shots had been fired at Indians in other days; bullet holes produced by the guns of the enemy besiegers were to be found in the outside logs.
	xroads.virginia.edu /~hyper/hns/domwest/build.html (1196 words)

	EDSITEment - Lesson Plan
		In this lesson, students examine photographs of sod houses, build a model sod house, and picture themselves living in a "soddie" to gain a firsthand perspective on this important period of American history.
		Students should notice that sod houses have doorways and windows, stovepipe chimneys, in some cases peaked roofs, and are usually surrounded by a yard.
		Students should notice the sod walls and sodded roof, the typically low construction, the isolation of the house on the plains, and in many images the small size of the house compared to the number of people who lived in it.
	edsitement.neh.gov /view_lesson_plan.asp?ID=296 (2253 words)

	Sod House Furnishings
		For the first few years the furnishings in their sod houses were only what could be brought in those wagons, plus what was made if a man could buy any lumber and was handy with his few tools.
		Until the house was built, with a fireplace at one end, they cooked outdoors over an open fire, or over a pit, unless they had a Dutch oven or a little portable stove.
		Where stones were scarce, the fireplace was built of sod slabs, thickly covered with mud, and had a "cat-and-claw" chimney of split sticks and clay.
	www.newton.dep.anl.gov /natbltn/600-699/nb666.htm (579 words)

	The Frontier Dugout (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Otherwise, it was treated as the neighboring Indian squaws treated their tipi floors: Sprinkled with water daily and swept with crude grass brooms until the surface was a hard and smooth as finished concrete.
		Walls of the sod houses were lined with newspapers pasted or pinned up with small, sharpened sticks to keep the, dirt from brushing off.
		The fertile Nebraska prairie sod – turned over in the fall and broken down to mellow richness by winter snows, freezing and thawing – produced bumper crops of corn and small grains.
	www.motherearthnews.com /library/1970_September_October/The_Frontier_Dugout (897 words)

	Living in a Sod House
		Because of the thickness of the walls and in insulating ability of the material, sod houses did an excellent job of keeping the heat of a stove in the house during winter.
		Several stories from folks who lived in sod houses sing the praises of a house that is "Cheap, cool in summer, warm in winter," as a Mr.
		Others tell of a school built of sod where, "The floor was of dirt and during the cold winter of 1884 the teacher's feet were frosted.
	www.nebraskastudies.org /0500/stories/0501_0109.html (511 words)

	If walls could talk - Columbia Missourian
		Unlike other forms of construction, the sod house is “an American form, through and through,” Welsch writes in the preface of his book.
		The majority of sod homes were actually built in tallgrass states such as Nebraska and Kansas, said Troutman, explaining that people in Missouri had more access to trees so they built more log homes.
		Because the sod house is located on Brush Creek Trail, it will be in the path of hikers at the Reserve, said Troutman.
	www.columbiamissourian.com /news/story.php?ID=10884 (694 words)

	There are no Renters Here: Homesteading in a Sod House (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Historians, folklorists and descendants, of pioneers have all studied the sod houses of the Great Plains.
		Several state historical societies, such as the Nebraska State Historical Society, which has an extensive collection of letters and photographs relating to sod houses, and museums such as the Prairie Homestead in Philip, South Dakota, are excellent resources for students, historians, and the general public.
		This sod house is located at the northeast entrance to the Badlands National Park.
	www.autry-museum.org /explore/exhibits/sod/resources.html (400 words)

	Websteader: Pioneer Sod Houses, c.1880 - 2003 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Sod was cut with special plows, or by hand, with an ax and/or shovel.
		This is the tough layer of prairie sod.
		“When they built their first sod house, they had worked all day getting the walls up, this was on the prairies in Alberta Canada, and during the night the cattle in the area rubbed up against the walls and knocked them over.
	websteader.com /wbstdsd1.htm (2127 words)

	The Dugout Soddy
		Sod, which is soil held tightly together by thousands of roots from prairie grasses, could be cut from the ground into blocks and used as insulation
		When this was done, they mounded the dirt dug from the cabin around the logs for stability and additional insulation.
		When it rained for an extended period, the sod acted like a giant sponge, then leaked big drops of dirty water.
	www.rchs.com /dugout_soddy.htm (454 words)

	Washington Missourian - Local News - 10/22/2004 - Living Off the Land (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		In fact, one of the volunteers Troutman recruited for the sod house project was Leonard Doorack, a retired bricklayer.
		One of the difficulties in building the sod house was that all of the materials had to be on hand from the beginning because the window frames and door frame had to be installed as the building process progressed, said Troutman.
		Most sod houses had windows on all sides, she said, which makes sense because otherwise the interior would be very dark.
	www.emissourian.com /site/news.cfm?newsid=13204725&BRD=1409&PAG=461&dept_id=544656&rfi=6 (1252 words)

	Sod Houses (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		One of the biggest attractions of the prairie land for those planning to file on a a homestead was the lack of trees, resulting in no roots, stumps, and seedlings on the land.
		Laura's sod house or "dugout" was made by removing earth from a creek bank and then building just the front wall and roof.
		In summer the sod house was an excellent cool shade from the fierce sun.
	webpages.marshall.edu /~irby1/laura/sodhouse.html (464 words)

	Post and Beam Homes
		Built out of blocks of prairie sod, this style of construction was used in the northern prairie, where the densely tangled roots of wild grasses created tough - and freely available - building material.
		Although some historic sod houses still exist, many of them were built as temporary homes for the first homesteaders who settled there.
		And many of the settlers who first lived in sod houses moved into a timber framed house once they could afford it.
	www.historychannel.com /classroom/frontierhomes/sodhome.html (435 words)

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