Exit78 Photo of the Day #118
Sod house, Ash Hollow State Historical Park, Nebraska, July 8, 2010 (Pentax K10D)
On our 2010 trip west, we visited this sod house in Nebraska. My great-great-grandparents, James Wesley Goad and Olive Orabelle Wineland Goad, built a similar structure in western Kansas in 1890 and lived in it for at least nine years.
Sod house (Wikipedia)
The sod house or “soddy” was a successor to the log cabin during frontier settlement of Canada and the United States. The prairie lacked standard building materials such as wood or stone; however, sod from thickly-rooted prairie grass was abundant.[2] Prairie grass had a much thicker, tougher root structure than modern landscaping grass.
Construction of a sod house involved cutting patches of sod in rectangles, often 2’×1’×6″ (60×30×15 cm) and piling them into walls. Builders employed a variety of roofing methods. Sod houses accommodate normal doors and windows. The resulting structure was a well-insulated but damp dwelling that was very inexpensive. Sod houses required frequent maintenance and were vulnerable to rain damage. Stucco or wood panels often protected the outer walls. Canvas or plaster often lined the interior walls.
Series notes:
- The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
- Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.
