The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-29
"SCotty" Has Novel Shack Near
 Death Valley
EARLY DAYS IN THE WEST
American Aborigines Were First To Use Apartment Houses-Unusual Devices of the Early
 Settlers.
BY FREDERIC J. HAsklN. |.

1 across the desert beyond the mushroom
 village of Greenwater, or Graveyard as
 1t is more generally called, will find the
 home of "scotty," the cratic millionaire
 miner, near the e.foof of Funeral Range
 and close to the "Twenty-Mule Teap"
 trail that leads into Death Valley. Scotty
 is hospitable soul, and in the one-roon
 shack he has cached liberal supply of | provisions, the shelves being ranged all
 about the room with their canned goods
 temptingly displayed. Still more promi- | nently displayed is the notice: Eat all
 you want, sleep all you want, loaf all
 you want, stay as long as you want, but
 don't take away anything you didn't
 bring. Don't be a dirty dog There is
 much hospitality behind the blunt invita- l ton, and many weary wanderer has 1 been refreshed fin this shack whose owner
 is rarely visible, and whose nearest
 neighbors are rough plank and canvas affairs over in Skdoo, which is still an-
 other name for the village of Greenwatcr
 with it's 15OO souls.
 This is typical home in the arid west,
 where every device has been used to se- l cure a shelter and make some pathetic 1 attempt at home. Long before an en- | terprising customer, with some oblquity in the shaping of his brain, set up a saw mill in a lonely part of treeless Kansas, the squatters there had already solved the problem of housebuilding. They se- cured few poles for supports, sometimes from a nearby river bank, but more often from some dealer further away, and then cutting sod from the great prairie all around, laid the squares brick fashion until the walls were made. The roof was made of like material, and when the primitive dwelling was set close in the side of the hill, flowers often grew over the roof and walls, and other boomers have driven across the dugout overhead, never dreaming they were. hear civillza- ton until some irate householder had ar- peared gun in hand, to warn them of. On an old western trail leading from Meade to Beaver is a deserted village that had only sod houses in it. The ruins of the hotel show that it once stood one and one-fourth stories high, and meas ured 20S40 feet The halfway house on the road from Vernon to Mangum, Tex, was only so late as 20 years ago flour ishing institution, whose guests were en- tertained behind sod walls that guarded the front of an unmistakable dugout. The sleeping accommodations consisted of six DeuB III IWO rows OH tilc DdCh Whil anu the race for these went to the swift and the strong. Dodge City, Tex. for long while boasted many odd houses of sod or canvas or cheap wood, harboring queer types of humanity and offering 8 check cred career to its citizens who too often went into eternal sod homes in Boot Hill cemetery-so called because its inmates had nearly all died with their boots on.
 homes standing in the northwest that prove the ingenuity of the pioneer. One of these is built of beer barrels standing on end in rows and has a roof matched with straw. Another is of empty bottles laid flat one on the other, with daubing of clay between. while the third is the same material of which Mrs. Wiggs made her roof in happy Cabbage Patch days. It is of tin cans that have been spread flat after the solder was melted, and pains talxingly tackled to uprights. Blankets for doors and petticoats for window sashes revolutionized architecture to a certain extent when these houses were made, but they served the purpose and no odds were asked. Chinese citizens of boom towns in the west have once or twice gone their white neighbors one better in ingenuity, and more than one first-class laundry has been found running success fully in a shack built of tin cans which were left intact as when collected from some friendly ash heap, except that each was filled with dirt and clay spread be- tween as they were laid in rows side ways on each other
 Burrowing in the ground Is not new idea anywhere in home making, as one may also see from Madame Waddington's "reminiscences of her life in France when she speaks of the beggars there. For years a negro lived almost in sight of Baltimore in a hole he had dug in the ground the smoke getting out as best 1t could when he pulled his trap door over Ihim and set about cooking. The air |$would have killed less hardy being. He was finally persuaded to move. On the Santa Cruz islands, off the coast of Santa Barbara, another digger in the earth has lived for IT years. This one is white man who tired of civilization, and utiliz- ing half excavated depression in cliff, boxed up the front and made a really homelike place. His natural rock roof is directly under a public roadway, though few who drive over know it.
 Freight cars have proved to develop marvellous possibilities when the home seeker has ben hard pressed. An em- ploye of the Union Pacific lived in one for 12 years, being carried from place to place as his work demanded. When the great Lucin cutoff was being built and thousands of workmen and their families were hurried out to the arid regions around Great Salt Lake to accom- plish the task of making stones lie in the buoyant water and support the pill ing, homes were a necessity. The rail- way company promptly met the need with trains of box cars which housed the families and soon looked homelike with curtains at the windows and flower pots at the door. Construction gangs on railways have lived in them for many years, and more than one small railway terminus boasts its switchman's house of unmistakable box-car origin. Freight cars have many times done duty as rail way stations in embryo towns of the west, and across from such a station in a North Dakota town stood a fourishing bank built of tarred paper and occupying an extensive space of ground l5 feet square.
 There are potentates- who may live in private cars that are rolling palaces, if they like, but only one negro couple has gone on record as having had a pri- vate Pullman for nearly a year. This was in the early days of Pullmans and the couple was the porter and his wife who had attached the car for the porters wages and refused to be put off. The ear was shunted off on a sidetrack down in Florida but the couple remained there in calm serenity until ma tiers were even tually adjusted to their satisfaction Street cars have often stood the test of transformation from a public chariot to a childs playhouse. shoe-shine par Tor. or a convenient quick lunch stand when horse power had given way to