Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1891 — A Dugout Home in the Southwest. [ARTICLE]

A Dugout Home in the Southwest.

Into the face of one of the low vertical earth walls of the broken land, the home-maker cuts a hole as a Yankee farmer digs a cellar for a hillside barn. Though rarely larger than ten by fourteen feet on the bottom, these collar-liko holes are sometimes twelve by .eighteen, with the depth of the hole as much as five or six feet, and sometimes eighteen byfifteen large, with the long way of the hole lying along the front of the natural earth wall. The digging completed, trees are cut to furnish logs for building up the front of the home, and for use as rafters placed a foot or so apart over the top. The limbs of the trees, with some long grass from a moist place, if any can be found, are used to make a rude thatch over the rafters, and then the sods, cut out. and carefully saved when the hole was dug, are placed on top of the thatch, while the earth from the hole is heaped on top of all into a gravo-shapo mound. A blanket is hung in the doorway, or the cotton from the wagon-hoops will serve, and there is the dugout. home as eosey as the home of a prame-dog or a woodchuck.