LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) - For volunteers with the Sandhills Journey National Scenic Byway Visitors Center, building a sod house has been a dream for a long time. Now it’s a reality. The work started in ...

Most people think of sod houses as those lived in by pioneers. Their basic living quarters were made of dirt walls. To me, it didn’t sound like a very pleasant life. Susan Davis (Courtesy photo) I was ...

You can truly experience some Nebraska history with a visit to a local landmark in Deuel County. The Waterman Sod House is known to many people from the Big Springs area. It's located in an area that ...

Ecologists in Nebraska are trying to find out what the Great Plains looked like when homesteaders settled there in the 19th century. To do that, they're working with a team of archaeologists and ...

COMSTOCK — As pioneers made their way into central Nebraska with the promise of land and a better life for their families, they used whatever material was available to build their homes. In Custer ...

Baked by the sun and buffeted by wind, the southeast corner of a sod house is typically the first piece to fail and fall. Merle Block would learn this lesson the hard way, some years after he’d taught ...

Illustrated with photos. by S. D. Butcher. https://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=liball&source=~!silibraries&uri=full=3100001~!294544~!0#focus ...

Solomon Devoe Butcher was born Jan. 24, 1856, at Burton, Va., which after the Civil War became part of West Virginia. When his family moved to Illinois, Butcher apprenticed to a tintypist/photographer ...

Merle Block put up the sod house next, cutting and stacking and shaping the bricks of soil into four walls and a roof. It took him three weeks and three good reference books, he said. The couple now ...