Sod House

Thousands of "soddies" once dotted the prairies of Oklahoma, but only this sod house built in 1894 by Marshal McCully remains. McCully took part in the largest of Oklahoma’s land runs when the Cherokee Outlet opened for settlement at noon on September 16, 1893. McCully first lived in a one-room dugout, hollowed out of a ravine bank. He built the two-room sod house in August 1894 using blocks of the thick buffalo grass blanketing Oklahoma’s prairies.

McCully hitched his team to an 18-inch sod plow and split the grass into long rows. Using a flat shovel, he chopped the rows into 18-inch lengths. He then laid the sod blocks like bricks to form the walls. To make the roof, McCully split poles from the few trees growing in the area and laid them across the top of the walls for rafters. Twelve inches of sod laid on the rafters completed the roof. Unlike many sod houses, McCully plastered the interior walls with alkali clay.

The McCully family lived in the sod house from 1894 until 1909, when they built a large, two-story frame house. They continued to use the soddy for storage until 1963. On December 31, 1963, exactly sixty years after McCully received patent to the land, the Oklahoma Historical Society acquired the sod home.

Although the soddy remains in its original location a cover structure now protects it from the elements. Visitors can experience the unique experience of walking through the furnished sod house to imagine what life was like for Oklahoma’s early settlers.