NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

August 13, 1998

Plains Folk: Homestead Shanties, Northern-Plains Style

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

©1998 Plains Folk

Perhaps it's because of the old folk song, "Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim." When people on the plains think of homesteaders and pioneer farmers, they think of sod houses. Little of the northern plains, however, was a sod-house frontier. This was a claim-shanty frontier.

Great tracts of the Dakotas and Montana were practically untouched by Euro-American settlers until after the turn of this century, when railroads finally arrived. Because the homesteaders arrived with the railroad, they had access to building materials right from the start. When they went about meeting the basic needs of shelter and claim requirements, they built with saws and hammers, not plows and spades.

A homestead shanty was a one-room proposition, generally with no foundation other than stones or blocks. It might have a gable roof or a simple shed roof, and the roof could be covered with planks and tar paper, perhaps with earth, but often with wood shakes. It might also have a vaulted (curved) roof covered with sheet metal. The walls commonly consisted of studs, horizontal plank boxing, and on that an exterior of tar paper held in place by lath. Most shanties had one window.

The claim shanty was supposed to be temporary, and most were. Most settlers proved up, sold out, and departed happy. That was when both the adaptability and the portability of homestead shanties was proven.

Settlers remaining on the land set about adapting their shanties for more permanent residential use. First, the shanty needed a more finished exterior. The obvious solution was wood lap siding, which was applied to many. An even better idea was stucco, because it was tighter and insulated better. It was a fairly easy proposition to attach chicken-wire to the walls and cover them with stucco that, with a coat of whitewash, made a neat appearance.

Then there was the stovepipe-chimney question. Most homestead shanties had iron stovepipes. Respectable permanence required replacement with brick chimneys.

Working on a survey of historic architecture in Bowman County for the State Historical Society of North Dakota, I was astonished to discover scores of homestead shanties still standing. Some held places of honor in farmsteads as private museums. Most, though, had been converted to use as workshops, bunkhouses, or general storage.

Single women and single men alike were numerous among the homesteaders, with the expected results—love and marriage among neighbors. Each person had a homestead shanty to prove up a claim. What, then, when two homesteaders married? Then the couple moved onto one place or the other, and generally moved the extra shanty with.

Perhaps, in a nice symbol of perpetual union, they even joined together their claim shanties. That was the case with Maria Carlson and Billy Lindros, of Harding County, South Dakota. Their two gabled shanties came together to make a cross-gabled two-room house. Today it sits, still filled with many of their furnishings, on the Neil and Rosalie Krinke farm in Bowman County, North Dakota.

On the old town site of Buffalo Springs, just south of Highway 12, is another interesting combination shanty. There were two homestead shanties, you see, each with a low gable roof punctured by an iron stovepipe. Their exteriors were tar paper. Someone moved the two together and joined them end-to-end, tacked chicken-wire around, and stuccoed over the whole deal. I'm told that this odd little building served as a restaurant.

Keep an eye out for them as you drive the country, those old homestead shanties, for they are our humble heritage.

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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339

Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136