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Dugout Days

-Messenger photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby
Mark Anderson, archaeologist at the Sanford Museum in Cherokee, is shown here with his dog near what was the entrance to an 1850s-era sod dugout house in Sac County.

When blizzards roar across Iowa, imagine taking shelter in a dugout sod house in the side of a hill. That experience wasn’t uncommon for pioneers trying to survive on the Iowa frontier in the mid-1800s. Traces of this history endure north of Sac City near the North Raccoon River valley.

“This is one of the best sites I’ve ever worked,” said Mark Anderson, the archaeologist at the Sanford Museum in Cherokee. “It’s just awesome.”

Located on private property, this site includes an 1850s-era sod dugout house farmstead where a claim shanty, a sod dugout house to the west and two smaller dugouts (possibly a root shelter or rudimentary barn) once stood. Anderson estimates the claim shanty (which was about the size of a traditional college dorm room), was likely established around 1856, while the sod house was probably built around 1858.

To the untrained eye, the remains of these structures look like unusual depressions in the ground, if they’re noticed at all.

To Anderson, however, these sites harbor a treasure trove of Iowa history.

-Messenger photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby
Archaeologist Mark Anderson's mini-Australian shepherds, Marley and Bruce, roam near a depression in the Sac County landscape where a pioneer built a claim shanty north of Sac City in the mid-1850s.

“I was amazed at all the items we kept finding as we excavated this site,” said Anderson, who conducted an extensive archaeological survey in 1996-97 on a 49-mile stretch from Moorland to Early (including this Sac County site), in preparation for the expansion of four-lane Highway 20.

Artifacts at the Sac County 1850s farmstead site included the pin of a door hinge, the central spindle of a hand-cranked coffee grinder, the top handle of a trivet, the top of a hurricane oil lamp, the arm of a ceramic doll, a cover for a pocket knife, square nails and shards of ceramic dishes, including whiteware and Rockingham/Bennington, a distinctive style with a thick brown, mottled glaze.

“These items probably belonged to middle-class settlers who took an overland route from Dubuque to Cedar Falls, Fort Dodge and Sac County,” Anderson said.

Dugout had whitewashed walls

Settlers ranging from families to single men began arriving in Sac County by 1853-54.

-Messenger photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby

While no one knows the names of the settlers who lived at the 1850s-era sod dugout farmstead, history does record some of the early settlers in Sac County, including D. Carr Early (a prominent Sac County pioneer) and a man named Mr. Taylor.

“Taylor was a brick mason from Ohio,” Anderson said. “It’s clear the dugout house north of Sac City was built by someone who knew how to build a sod house.”

Dugouts were typically built into the sheltered side of a hill, requiring little lumber or money to complete. They did require proper construction techniques, though, including heavy “bricks” cut from the nearby sod. Glacial cobbles (rocks) were used to square out the corners and help buttress the weight of the sod walls of the Sac County dugout.

Pioneer-era dugouts in Iowa sometimes included some surprising enhancements. The Sac County dugout (which measured roughly 12 feet by 18 feet) had whitewashed interior walls, said Anderson, whose excavations revealed some rotted wood that was once part of the front door frame.

Sod homes provided primitive, but effective, shelter

While living in a house made of dirt may not sound appealing, the dugout house is one of the oldest types of shelters used by humans. Dugouts are still in use today around the world, from Iceland to Australia, Anderson said.

In the United States, dugouts were most commonly used in the 1800s on the prairies, where lumber wasn’t readily available. In her book “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” Laura Ingalls Wilder described life in her family’s dugout house in the 1870s near Walnut Grove, Minnesota.

While sod houses had their drawbacks (such as invading mice and snakes, a dark interior and potential water seepage), sod was a great insulator, making dugouts fairly warm and cozy in the winter and cool in the summer. Because they offered such good protection against blizzards, tornadoes and other storms, they helped enhance the mental well-being of the pioneers on the Iowa frontier.

“Dugouts were psychologically comforting,” Anderson said.

Sod dugout homes provided primitive, but effective, shelters until more comfortable homes could be built. Lumber to build homes, barns and other structures became more readily available and more affordable with the arrival of the railroads, Anderson said. The sod dugout house in Sac County appears to have been used until the 1880s, he added.

“By the late 1870s, dugouts started to fade away. When people moved out of a dugout permanently, local farmers often repurposed the roofing timbers to build farm buildings. When the dugouts were no longer used as homes, they dissolved quickly.”

Site harbors prehistoric history

While the 1850s-era sod dugout house farmstead is intriguing, the Sac County site conceals even more Iowa history, dating back thousands of years.

“Prehistoric people hung out here 2,000 years ago when they were in the area to hunt, fish and gather provisions for making baskets and other woven items,” said Anderson, who revisited the site in late November 2022.

As Anderson stood on a knob above the point where the land slopes down to the river, just west of the 1850s-era dugout farmstead, he pondered the stories of the pioneers and prehistoric people who were here before him.

“Everyone needs water, so that’s why this site was so attractive to people,” he said.

The land in this area has never been plowed, added Anderson, although traces of a well-worn walking trail from the farmstead down to the river are still evident. Anderson’s excavations in this area also revealed debris from at least three kinds of prehistoric chipping stone tools, as well as Sioux quartzite. “This was the hearthstone the prehistoric people used,” he said. “They knew Sioux quartzite absorbs heat well without shattering.”

Anderson noted there are at least a dozen prehistoric sites in the immediate area where the North Raccoon River winds through Sac County north of Sac City. “Stream and river crossings can be a jackpot of archaeological artifacts,” Anderson said.

Ironically, all those artifacts, from the prehistoric people’s camp to the 1850s-era sod dugout farmstead, represent previous generations’ trash. “Archaeologists dig up other people’s garbage,” Anderson said. “We’re glorified garbage people.”

Truly, one generation’s trash can be a future generation’s treasure. The Sac County artifacts also reflect the grit, determination and self-reliance that defined the people who settled there. Perhaps the 1914 book History of Sac County, Iowa says it best.

“To have been a pioneer in western Iowa — to have set stakes in the early 1850s and 1860s in Sac County — was to have taken part in many interesting, as well as trying, scenes and transactions. Far removed from a thickly-settled community, far from railroads and mills and post offices and market towns, hardships were entailed which but few of today can comprehend.”

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