ALINE—The Sod House Museum along State Highway 8 in Alfalfa County has reopened for visitors.
They can step inside the days of when pioneer Marshal McCully staked a claim during the Land Run of 1893 in the middle of a vast prairie southeast of what became the town of Aline and constructed what stands today as Oklahoma’s only intact sod house, preserved in the exact location it was when McCully built it.
Back then, there was a scarcity of lumber that proved challenging for him and the thousands of others like him. But pioneers took a note from those who had first settled the area—the Osage, Pawnee, and Hidatsa tribes who had constructed their homes out of sod bricks cut from the fertile grasslands—and duplicated that method.
Longtime site manager Renee Trindle, who retired following a medical absence that closed the museum last summer, estimated 1 million soddys were erected in the Midwest during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
However, only a few are still standing today, but most are partial or in pieces or have been concreted over, Trindle said in a November 2024 interview, which is what makes the McCully’s sod house so unique. Even the original plow McCully used is on display at the Sod House Museum.
Cherokee High School alum Dalton Meeks assumed the position of museum site director three months ago and reopened the doors after initial renovations were completed outside.
In late December, the parking lot got fresh asphalt and painted with established handicapped parking spots followed by a new fence on the perimeter and refreshed signage earlier this year.
“There’s more to come,” Meeks promised. The outer enclosure protecting the sod house will receive a facelift and the entire site will become ADA compliant as much as possible. All the outdoor artifacts will be re-assessed too.
“We’re trying to move some of it out of here,” he said, explaining some of the more preserved items will relocate to other museums operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society that are related to pioneer life while other items will be put up for auction.
The reason for the outdoor refresh is to allow for more outdoor activities, transforming the Sod House Museum from simply a viewing site to an interactive site, Meeks said. He plans to host campfires, chuckwagons, rope making, laundry cleaning on washboards, old-fashioned games, and more in the future as well as history and science sessions.
A former history teacher in the Fort Worth, Texas, area, who also served as an interpreter at Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum in Pawnee while he was in college, Meeks is excited to bring Northwest Oklahoma history alive.
He said members of the Friends of the Sod House Museum have been phenomenal alongside OHS regional site director Nathan Turner in providing him the resources and support he needs to be successful in filling Trindle’s shoes plus helping him catch the vision for the museum’s mission.
The short-term vision is to create educational programming that includes not only tours, but hands-on activities too. Meeks will host school groups from Enid starting in May.
The middle-term vision, he said, is every artifact will be uploaded into the site’s online database; all OHS museums will eventually be viewable on OHS’ Gateway to Oklahoma History portion of the website.
The long-term vision is all the improvements outdoors and indoors. All three indoor exhibits next to the soddy will be replaced in the near future, with the first one hopefully completed by this fall, Meeks said.
“We want to be more about the land … and what was life like for the McCullys,” he said.
Living in a sod house
The McCully family only lived in the sod house for 15 years, until 1909, when they built and moved into a two-story wood-frame house just west of the soddy.
McCully’s daughter Louvisa Elliott commented during an interview in 1987 said that her parents “hurried the building [of the frame house along] so I wouldn’t have to be born in a soddy. … My half-sister, Letha (Clawson, who died in 1962), was born in the sod house.”
Although Elliott never lived in the sod house herself, she told stories of how she and her friends used it as a playhouse, and that it also served as the family’s storage shed. Trindle added the sod house also served as a hatchery for the McCully’s chickens for a time too.
Elliott’s mother died in 1957 and her father died in 1963. She allowed the sod house to be sold to the Oklahoma Historical Society shortly after her father’s death “so people could learn about sod houses,” Trindle told the Enid News & Eagle in 2024, adding OHS had previously tried to purchase section of land with the sod house on it from McCully himself but he refused.
Elliott’s daughter, Norma Jean Kiner Wharton, lived nearby, so her grandfather often visited. He reportedly was visiting his granddaughter, Trindle said, the day his wood-frame house caught fire; McCully was actually living in the sod house at the time of his death at the age of 95.
Wharton died in 1998 and Elliott died in 2001. Elliott’s grandchildren, thus McCully’s great-grandchildren, Phil Kiner and Mark Kiner, shared numerous tales with Trindle through the years about growing up around the sod house.
As part of the restoration, the Oklahoma Historical Society enclosed the sod house in a special humidity-controlled building to ensure it would endure for generations to come. Visitors to the Sod House Museum get to experience it inside and out, up close and personal.
Both rooms have been restored as authentically to what it would have looked like in the early 1900s. The stove is the original one the McCullys used. In the bedroom, the organ is reminiscent of the one his first wife had, and the headboard is identical to the one McCully used. McCully’s second wife chose to wall paper the plaster walls with red wallpaper, so there are nods to that as well.
Also enclosed inside the museum is the family’s original root cellar, constructed in 1911.
Sod House Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. excluding federal holidays. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for senior adults age 62 and older; $5 for children; and free for OHS members, active-duty military, military veterans, and children age 6 and younger. Credit cards are now accepted along with cash. Call (580) 463-2441 to schedule group and school tours.
To become an OHS member, go online to okhistory.org under the “support” tab and click on “membership.” The annual subscription tiers range from basic membership for $40 to benefactor membership for $5,000. All levels include free admission to all OHS museums and historical sites as well as free OHS publications.