Sod House
After buying the land in 1849, Jane and Heman Gibbs built a small, one-room, dug-out sod house where they lived for 5 years while farming the land. The house was 10'x12' and built with logs and featured a sod roof. This design kept the house well insulated in the winter and cool in the summer.
The original location was next to the farm house and was excavated in 1995. Now a replica built from the architectural investigation stands in the prairie.
Read more about this topic: Gibbs Museum Of Pioneer And Dakotah Life
Famous quotes containing the words sod and/or house:
“There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearld Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mothers face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmates voice, it hears.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822)
“Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave,
May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends, and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too!
And since love neer will from me flee,
A mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
Only beloved and loving me.”
—Abraham Cowley (16181667)