Rozum, illuminates the saga of the “soddie” in west. The sod house or soddy was an often used alternative to the log cabin during frontier settlement of the great plains of canada and the united states in the 1800s and early 1900s. The article, “it’s weathered many a storm:
By the 1880s, they no longer had to spade one brick at a time, as a grasshopper plow cut the sod into strips. The free 160 acres provided by the 1862 homestead act would have sustained an eastern farm, but barely supported a subsistence shortgrass farm on the western great. It stood until 1967, proof of isadore’s skill and determination.
The house was demolished that year. In 1846, mormons became the first to build sod homes. Early settlers built their first shelters from what was available, thick prairie sod. The land was great for farming, but few trees grew there.
The enduring sod house in northwestern south dakota” by molly p. When people wanted to build their first house on the prairie, they didn’t typically use stones or logs to do it. Project architect david murphy and architectural historian diane laffin, however, found a small group of sod houses that are still, or were very recently, occupied. The sod house or soddy was a corollary to the log cabin during frontier settlement of the united states.
Sod houses were made of blocks of sod or layers of turf. A soddy, or sod house, was an alternative shelter when wood or stone was scarce. The prairie lacked standard building materials such as wood or stone; Soddie (plural soddies) (us, canada, informal) a house constructed from blocks of sod, once common in the prairies of the united states and canada.