The American Pioneer Sod House was common from the earliest days of settlement to the early years of this country. Sod Houses are small houses with walls built of stacked layers of uniformly cut turf. The individual bricks of sod are held together by the thick network of roots that made preparing fields for planting very difficult. Sod was cut with very special plows or by hand, with an ax or shovel. Roofs were made from timber, rough or plained, and covered with more sod. Sod houses are practical and tough, but very vulnerable.