Mud Mansions

In my current WIP (work in progress), the heroine recently settled a 640-acre land grant in Oregon Territory. Before her husband's death, he built a house that was part dugout, part soddy. It's been quite interesting, doing research on these houses made from grass and mud.

This image is of a dugout in Kansas, but it shows some of the same features as my heroine's. It was made by digging into the side of a hill, then adding walls, some built with pieces of sod, and others from wood. This might seem and odd choice for home construction, but when faced with scorching summers and frigid, windy winters, burrowing into the side of a hill was preferable to enduring the elements in a drafty covered wagon.

To build the walls, settlers would cut blocks of sod, using ox-driven plows. They would cut it from the place where they planned to put the house, as removing the grass protected the dwelling from prairie fires. But they only cut as much sod as they could lay in a day, because it dried out quickly. 

The sod 'bricks' were about 4 inches thick, but they were 2- to 3-feet square, so they made thick sturdy walls that provided great insulation. Typical wood construction was often used to add a door and window, and sometimes form a portion of the house if it extended beyond the hill. If a family had the means, they might lay planks over the dirt floor, but most didn't. 

Dugouts and soddies were cheap to build and provided protection, but they were dank and dirty caves. Bugs and snakes often invaded these homes, and any part of the roof that extended beyond the hill --the entire roof if it was merely a soddy-- leaked when it rained. I can't imagine what it must've been like to keep such a house clean. Of course, if you wanted to brighten up the place, all you had to do was toss some flower seeds on the roof.

Every single time I study early American settlers, I'm left in awe of what they went through just to make a home and make a life.