The roof was made of poles, brush, hay, and earth. Walls with doors and windows were placed at the open end of the pit and along the sides with the use of sod, stone, or logs. A dugout is a rude shelter dug into the ground and roofed with sod or occasionally some other material. Dirt constantly fell from the walls and roof onto dining tables and other furniture. On the plains, the dugout consisted of a rectangular pit, five to seven feet deep, eight or ten feet wide, and of variable length. In Oklahoma dugouts were utilized in the central and western portions of the state. Cabins and Claim Houses were strong enough to withstand the weather and no bigger than a camping tent. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law. Font size: Willard B. Robinson, Partial or half dugouts were favored in areas of broken terrain.
A rectangular excavation was made into the side of a hill. In addition to providing shelter with few manufactured materials, the dugout was made tolerably comfortable in both summer and winter by the temperature of the ground.
Dugouts were occasionally flooded. With limited natural resources, early settlers to Edmond built their homes from sod.
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Regardless of the type of dugout, floors generally were tamped earth, although in some instances wooden flooring eventually was installed.
Evidently they were most common in regions with severe winters, where insulation against the bitter cold was essential to survival and where timber for building log cabins or picket-walled jacals was scarce.
Walls were sometimes whitewashed or covered with domestics, and ceilings might be lined with canvas. Natural terrain provided the walls of their home.
In numerous instances, dugout schools and dugout churches were also built.
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They relied on assortments of dried twigs, tufts of grass, hay twists, old corncobs or woody sunflower stalks. Morning was the best time to harvest sod bricks which were easier to handle when the moisture content was high. A surge of people participated in the April 22, 1889 Land Run into the Unassigned Lands of central Oklahoma. About an acre of land could be broken into enough sod bricks to build a home of this size. The 1889ers, as history would name them, ranged from a variety of professions, religions, ethnic groups, social boundaries and educational levels. Edmond was settled in April 1889, the time of year in Oklahoma for strong storms. The roof was often fashioned from log beams that supported saplings or tree branches placed side by side and covered with grass, weeds, or tow sacks, all finally covered with dirt. Stored in old gunny sacks, the chips were stacked in a dry corner of the family home to be burned throughout the long winter months.”, Stratton, Joanna, “Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier”.
Yes, I would like to begin receiving history-rich content, news, and updates from TSHA. Problems with ventilation, lighting, insects, flooding or seepage, and the stigma of living underground like prairie dogs, contributed to the perception of the dugout as an expedient but temporary solution to a housing problem. Users agree not to download, copy, modify, sell, lease, rent, reprint, or otherwise distribute these materials, or to link to these materials on another web site, without authorization of the Oklahoma Historical Society. Townsend, Hardy Cryer Angela and John Wheeler Turner were some of the first 89ers to build houses in Edmond. A typical sod house was about fourteen feet by sixteen feet. Often rugs were placed over the earth floors. A dugout is a rude shelter dug into the ground and roofed with sod or occasionally some other material. The Two Story Dugout, originally located west of Levelland, represents the full dugout, although a wooden-framed second story eventually was added to it. Dugouts were often carved into the sides of hills, banks, or ravines and were enclosed by a front wall built of sod or logs.
The first—and most desirable—homes were simply small rooms dug into the lee side of a low rolling hill. Website designed & developed by. This includes individual articles (copyright to OHS by author assignment) and corporately (as a complete body of work), including web design, graphics, searching functions, and listing/browsing methods. Families who came to Edmond with money were able to buy lumber for houses immediately following the Land Run. Where the terrain possessed little relief, dugouts were hollowed out of the ground to a depth of about two to six feet. With limited natural resources, early settlers to Edmond built their homes from sod. In this front wall were the door and perhaps a window. Cass G. Barns, The Sod House (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1930). Like most primitive shelters, dugouts are difficult to document, but certainly they have been in use around the world for centuries. They were typically rectangular in plan and measured between twelve and eighteen feet on a side. ©2020 Edmond Historical Society & Museum. Comments, Suggestions, and Corrections About the Encyclopedia Terms of Use, Oklahoma Historical Society | 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive, Oklahoma City, OK 73105 | 405-521-2491Site Index | Contact Us | Privacy | Press Room | Website Inquiries.
Once land was secured, the next priority was planting crops. Dug-outs then served as storm shelters or root cellars. Many families dug into the ground or the side of a hill. About an acre of land could be broken into enough sod bricks to build a home of this size. Soddies were built by staggering the sod pieces with the grass side down. Support the Handbook today. The following (as per The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition) is the preferred citation for articles:Alyson L. Greiner, “Dugout,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=DU003. Handbook of Texas Online, Barns served to protect animals, straw, hay, grains and planting seeds from the elements.
This type of small shelter was sometimes called a “Claim House.”. After houses were built, dugouts commonly became cellars or storage bins.
Dugouts belong to no particular historical period but rather to a phase of frontier development. On the Texas plains and prairies they were basic forms of shelter during early settlement and were particularly prominent on ranches and farms.
If wood was available, short extensions of the walls above ground, about two feet high, were built around the pit, allowing the introduction of windows for light and ventilation; these were closed with either shutters or sashes. See also: ARCHITECTURE, FARMING, FOLK ARCHITECTURE, FOLKLIFE, SETTLEMENT PATTERNS, SOD HOUSE.
Many planted small gardens for food and most planted turnips first because they are a fast crop, able to provide turnips for the family and the turnip greens to feed their livestock. Section 107 related to Copyright and “Fair Use” for Non-Profit educational institutions, which permits the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), to utilize copyrighted materials to further scholarship, education, and inform the public.
LeRoy R. Hafen and Carl Coke Rister, Western America: The Exploration, Settlement, and Development of the Region Beyond the Mississippi (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1941). A It was a most common shelter on the Texas plains and prairies, where timber for building was scarce. A typical sod house was about fourteen feet by sixteen feet. Dugouts were temporary and served as dwellings only until more sophisticated buildings could be erected. A A type of dwelling, shelter, or other structure that is wholly or partially below ground constitutes a dugout. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dugout. As dwellings, dugouts were affordable and practical. After the land was farmed and harvests brought in family incomes, many people then had enough money to afford the lumber to build larger, nicer houses.
They provided refuge from tornadoes, a warm hearth in the winter, and a cool retreat in the summer. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Examples of both types of dugouts are preserved at the Ranching Heritage Center on the Campus of Texas Tech University. When fuel was in scarce supply on the tree-less plains of Oklahoma, pioneer families scoured the prairie for anything burnable. The roof was supported by purlins, logs, or poles extending the length of the dugout. After the land openings some homesteaders built dugouts as a way of validating their claim. E.B. Dugout home of Francis Noe near Elk City, 1892(17899, Oklahoma Historical Society Photograph Collection, OHS). The walls were built up with sod blocks to a height of seven or eight feet.
In dry weather, the pioneer housewife and her children roamed the grasslands in search of these cow and buffalo chips. This style provided improved drainage.
Timber, support poles were added to hold the weight of the roof, which in some cases was also made of layers of sod blocks. Evidently, on occasion an unwary cow stepped through the roof. Mondel Rogers, Old Ranches of the Texas Plains (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1976).
Wooden frames created spaces where windows and doors could be placed. In 1890, families were settled and could plan ahead for their crops and further establish their farms, planting cash crops like wheat, oats, barley, and cotton. Residents described problems with snakes, spiders, salamanders, and other pests, which infested the roofs. As these pithouses were very similar to those first built in northeastern Europe 25,000 years ago, pithouse technology may have been carried to the Americas by early nomadic settlers, traveling first through Siberia, and then across the ice bridge between Asia and North America about 12,000 to 14,000 years ago.
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