Sod House

A close parallel often exists between the cost of an item and the length of service it gives. Certainly this is true in the case of the sod house. Constructed of blocks of grass-matted soil, its cost was understandably low. The Great Plains were blanketed by sod - more than enough for the walls and roofs of the estimated one million "soddies" constructed, for the most part, in the last half of the 19th century. But if its cost was low, so was its life expectancy. Not only did the elements tend to hurry the dust to dust" transition -- especially on the largely treeless prairies where hard rain showers and persistent winds are as common as soap weed and buffalo grass -- but so did the area's housewives and homemakers. As means became available, and alternate building materials, most homesteaders were quick to erect more conventional dwellings. The average sod house, abandoned and neglected, rarely lasted more than a dozen years or so.

The two-room McCully sod house in northwestern Oklahoma is a rare, perhaps unique, certainly invaluable exception, Erected in 1894, it is the only original example of this type of construction in Oklahoma and, some believe, the last original sod house built by a homesteader. Now partially restored and preserved in a protective metal building, it is open to the public as a state historical monument, an impressive testimonial to the hardiness and resourcefulness of the pioneers who settled and developed the western prairies.

Marshall McCully staked his claim to the quarter section on which the sod house stands a few days after the Cherokee Outlet was opened to settlement by run on September 16, 1893. He built his two-room, 12 x 24-foot house in August 1894 and lived in it until 1909, when he and his family moved into a large frame house nearby. It is believed that the wind protection given by the new house, with the shelter provided by an elm tree which grew up at the comer of the soddy, were at least partly responsible for its survival the fifty-plus years it served the Mc Cully family for storage. Mr. McCully kept his home here until he died in August 1963, at 95. On December 31, 1963, exactly 60 years after the patent for the land was issued to him, the Oklahoma Historical Society acquired the structure.