The sod house or “soddy” was a successor to the log cabin during frontier settlement of Canada and the United States. The prairie lacked standard building materials such as wood or stone; however, sod from thickly-rooted prairie grass was abundant. Prairie grass had a much thicker, tougher root structure than modern landscaping grass.

Construction of a sod house involved cutting patches of sod in rectangles, often 2’×1’×6″ (60×30×15 cm) and piling them into walls. Builders employed a variety of roofing methods. Sod houses accommodate normal doors and windows. The resulting structure was a well-insulated but damp dwelling that was very inexpensive. Sod houses required frequent maintenance and were vulnerable to rain damage. Stucco or wood panels often protected the outer walls. Canvas or plaster often lined the interior walls.

History:
Plagne huts were found in the poorest areas of the Netherlands, especially in Drenthe , Friesland and Overijssel and adjacent areas, such as Groningen Westerwolde , Frisian Het Bildt and Frisian Woods . Shaggy huts also existed in the peat areas in Flanders. Settling huts were inhabited by the poorest workers, often with large families. A turf hut was a simple structure, usually partially excavated and without side walls so that the roof started at ground level. The roof was covered with plagues that were taken from the surrounding land. It is often said that it was an unwritten rule that a new turf hut was allowed to stay if it was built between sunset and sunrise and the chimney smoked in the morning. However, this is a myth.

Settle huts often stood in peat extraction areas . They were used for centuries as shelter for peat laborers. Also the underlying peat layer had to be removed and construction of stone houses only took place when the peat had been excavated down to the underlying sandy soil. Peat owners and companies dug the peat areas down to the sandy soil, and the peat under a hut was sold out when it was ready. At the end of the 19th century, at the beginning of the 20th century, the turf hut came into use on a large scale as a home for the poor. The cabins were to be found on the undivided heathlands that lay outside the esdorpen, often in the vicinity of large peatlands where a surplus of workers arose at the end of the 19th century. The living conditions were miserable. Due to the construction method the room was bad to heat, it was damp and it was crawling with vermin. Residents of turf huts did not grow old.

The housing law in 1901 forbade the living in turf huts. Replacement dwellings were only offered on a limited basis. After the Second World War a large-scale housing program was started and the last turf huts disappeared.

Last turf huts
The last turf hut in Drenthe, on the Eerste Groene Dijk south of Emmer-Erfscheidenveen , disappeared in 1949. One of the last fossilized turf houses there was demolished in 1960 at the Pikveld near Barger-Erfscheidenveen , followed by a copy in Nieuw Dordrecht in 1965. In 1982, the last petrified slaughterhouse disappeared when the front house of Leemdijk 26 in Smilde was demolished. In Friesland is not exactly known when the last spitkeet disappeared: In Jubbega, after the Second World War, there were still a few of the districts there. In 1962 another petrified dump was demolished at the Doktersheide in Tieke , but this was no longer a real spit. At that time there were still a number of wooden shacks in that region, which are sometimes also referred to as ‘spit chain’.

In some places in the Netherlands, tourists can spend the night in a specially built and furnished sod hut.

Notable sod houses
Sod houses that are individually notable and historic sites that include one or more sod houses or other sod structures include:

Iceland
Skagafjordur Folk Museum, Turf/Sod houses of the burstabær style in Glaumbær
Arbaer Folk Museum

Canada
Addison Sod House, a Canadian National Historic Landmark building, in Saskatchewan
L’Anse aux Meadows, the site of the pioneering 10th-11th century CE Norse settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland, has reconstructions of eight sod houses in their original locations, used for various purposes when built by Norse settlers there a millennium ago

United States
Cottonwood Ranch, Sheridan County, Kansas. The ranch site, listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), included a sod stable
Dowse Sod House, near Comstock, Nebraska; NRHP-listed and operated as museum
Heman Gibbs Farmstead, Falcon Heights, Minnesota; the NRHP-listed site includes a replica of the original 1849 sod house
Jackson-Einspahr Sod House, Holstein, Nebraska, NRHP-listed
Leffingwell Camp Site, Flaxman Island, Alaska, listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)
Minor Sod House, McDonald, Kansas, NRHP-listed
Pioneer Sod House, Wheat Ridge, Colorado, NRHP-listed
Gustav Rohrich Sod House, Bellwood, Nebraska, NRHP-listed
Sod House (Cleo Springs, Oklahoma), also known as Marshall McCully Sod House, NRHP-listed
Sod House Ranch, Burns, Oregon, (does not include a sod house)
Wallace W. Waterman Sod House, Big Springs, Nebraska, NRHP-listed

Source From Wikipedia