page_title: Dowse Sod House
section_title: Sod houses on the Great Plains
hierarchical_section_title: Dowse Sod House / Sod houses on the Great Plains
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of William R. Dowse House, located southwest of Comstock in Custer County, Nebraska. The sod house was built in 1900, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It is now open as a museum. The window in the photo is in the south wall of the kitchen; it leads to a more recent enclosed porch. Note the thickness of the wall; for scale, a United States five-dollar bill was placed on the right side of the window seat.
context_page_description: The William R. Dowse House, more commonly known as the Dowse Sod House, is a sod house in Custer County in the central portion of the state of Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. It was built in 1900 and occupied until 1959. After a long period of neglect, it was restored beginning in about 1981, and opened as a museum in 1982.
  The house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, as "an excellent example of the sod house phenomenon", and as one of the few surviving sod houses in Nebraska.
context_section_description: The Homestead Act of 1862 was a major factor in opening the Great Plains to white settlement.  Under the provisions of the Act, settlers could obtain title to a quarter-section (160 acres, or 65 ha) of land for a nominal fee, provided that they built a house, made certain improvements, farmed the land, and occupied the site for at least five years.
  Settlers in the regions east of the Missouri River had found ample trees with which to build log houses.  The eastern quarter of Nebraska was also well supplied with timber.  However, as settlers moved further west, they encountered the treelessness that had led Major Stephen H. Long, exploring the region in 1820, to label it the "Great American Desert".  Especially before the arrival of the railroad, the cost of importing building materials was prohibitive; and many homesteaders had spent all that they had on farming equipment, and could barely afford the filing fees for their land claims.
  There is no consensus among scholars regarding the origin of sod construction on the Plains.  Some maintain that the inspiration came from the earth lodges of the local native peoples, including the Omahas and the Pawnees.  However, these earth lodges were circular in cross-section, and built upon heavy timber frameworks.  It has also been suggested that the idea of building with sod came from European immigrants, either Russian-Germans, who are known to have built rammed earth dwellings in the Plains, or immigrants from the British Isles, particularly from Ireland, where turf houses were built with stone foundations and frames to support the turf.  None of these closely resembled the unframed sod-block houses built in the Midwestern United States, but they might have engendered the idea of building with earth.
  A simple sod house could be built in about a week, and for a cost of less than five dollars.  Cost was not the only advantage.  The thick walls provided insulation against summer heat and winter cold; the latter was particularly important in light of the dearth of firewood on the plains, which forced the early settlers to burn corncobs, twisted grass, or dried buffalo dung.  The walls also withstood prairie winds better than framed walls; even sod houses struck by tornadoes generally survived with no worse damage than the loss of the roof, leaving the walls standing.  Sod houses also provided a safe refuge against prairie fires, especially when surrounded by a plowed and back-burned firebreak.
  The sod house was not without its disadvantages, however.  Initially, at least, most had dirt floors, which had to be sprinkled with water to abate dust.  To protect against invasion by rodents, insects, and snakes, the interior walls were often shaved smooth and plastered with lime, or with a mixture of local clay and sand or ashes; the lower portions of the exterior walls could also be reinforced, with planks or concrete if they were available, or with a second layer of sod to thicken them.  Leaky roofs were also a problem; to protect the inhabitants and the interior furnishings from falling water, dirt, and vermin, it was common to make a ceiling of a white muslin sheet tacked to the walls.  Since windows were one of the most expensive elements of a sod house, pioneers on a budget were often forced to make do with windows that were small and few in number; a light muslin ceiling and plastered walls helped to illuminate the house by reflecting daylight through the interior.
  Sod houses continued to be occupied and built even after wood for construction became available.  A number of contemporary photographs show occupied sod houses adjacent to frame barns and outbuildings.  The Dowse house was built in 1900, although the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad had reached the nearby town of Comstock in 1899, and a lumber company was available there.  During the Great Depression of the 1930s, several Custer County farmers who had lost their homes relocated to vacant land and built sod houses there.  As late as 1940, a sod house was built near Dunning, Nebraska.
  The sod houses of Custer County ar
caption: South-facing kitchen window.  Note thickness of wall and beveling of window well.
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