Agathos Dorea

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them
into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand…”

~Matthew 7:26

In the early 1930’s, thousands of people from the east fell prey to swindlers selling lots in phantom towns scattered across the Great Plains. Promising investors towns with immaculately landscaped homes and municipalities with coffers overflowing, men and women of all ages bought into a dream that was just too good to be true.

According to Dust Bowl historian, Timothy Egan, when proud buyers arrived to town, they were utterly and completely shocked…”Women came in full-length white dresses and men in polished boots…on the city’s imaginary streets, the buyers found stakes in the ground and flags flapping in the wind. No railroads, no tracks. No plans for railroads. No fine houses. No businesses. The artesian well was a stockman’s crude tank next to a windmill, full of flies.”

Swindled and broke, many were forced to remain in a sea of sand. The experience was so demoralizing and degrading it was, according to Egan, “beyond one’s wildest imagination.”

To survive, sod houses were erected. Drawing from accounts of survivors, “Soddies” were among the most miserable forms of existence–they leaked when it rained, they were vulnerable to snakes and spiders, and it was impossible to regulate temperature in the summer or winter. Heartbreakingly, inhabitants woke each morning to find that the only thing clean in the entire dwelling was the area of the pillow directly beneath their heads.

In remote areas throughout the Great Plains, several sod houses still stand.