Early homestead dwellings on the Saskatchewan prairies were often utilitarian before they were comfortable or beautiful. Using a waste product of cultivation, homesteaders broke native prairie by stripping sod from the surface soil and then built their homes of this matted tangle of dirt, grass, and roots.
Sod houses were innovative in that they used a free material that was close at hand (unlike lumber or bricks) and needed no special skills to convert into dwellings, unlike stone building which required masonry skills. The houses were often simple and small, but their thick walls made a warm shelter in winter and kept the interior cool in hot summers. The sod houses also blended with the environment, taken right from the earth itself.Eventually most settlers abandoned their sod homes and rebuilt with wood, brick or stone. Being made of dirt, I had assumed that sod houses simply did not withstand the elements, and offered no more than temporary shelter for the first few years on a homestead.
Certainly, many sod houses were crude buildings with dirt floors and rough walls. Depending upon the level of finish and the ingenuity of the builder, a sod house could offer long-term shelter and conventional comfort that looked like colonial adaptations of European building.
The James Addison sod house at Kindersley, Saskatchewan is an example of sophisticated sod building. Built in 1909, Addison’s house was home to members of his family until 2006. It exists today as a national and provincial historic site, being the oldest continuously occupied sod building in Saskatchewan.
As seen in the photographs, ‘breaking’ the land for planting crop nearly erased all native vegetation from the province. In the first decades of land management on the North American prairies, human cultivation nearly destroyed the grasslands and the farms that evolved from it.
The ‘dirty thirties’ resulted, over-cultivation coinciding with drought. With no grass on the prairie, and no moisture for crops to take hold, central North America was left in a series of dust storms that threatened the prairie topsoil. In response to the crisis, prairie dwellers learned that the only way to survive on this land was to manage it with intelligence, respect, and care.
There’s no place like home: little did they know, but these sod-strippers and homesteaders were paving the way to a gritty future. The black and white film footage in The Wizard Oz replicates Kansas and its fierce dust storms, blowing Dorothy into Technicolor Oz.
All photos estimated to be circa early 1900s to 1905, 1906. Source: Saskatchewan Archives Board.
At this point in my story, I have lived in Weyburn for almost two months, and my family and I have met many people who are struggling with the same problems we have with housing. There are others living in campers, trying to get a house to buy or an apartment to rent. Others are crammed in with relatives or commuting to Weyburn from Regina or Moose Jaw each day for work. It is a seller’s market: nice houses rarely come up for sale and if they appear on the Multiple Listing Service they are very expensive; poorly maintained homes are easier to come by and cheaper, but are well beyond over-priced.
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