The next time that you walk by a National Register plaque, remember that it’s there because a perfectly ordinary person did something extraordinary. At its very core, the National Register is a grassroots program.
Historic preservation seeks to honor the connection people inherently have between identity and place. Virginia Lee Burton’s classic, The Little House, speaks to that connection with the direct emotional resonance that makes children’s literature so powerful.
Ryan Reed has seen and heard the stories of a lot of buildings in his travels across Nebraska. His current favorite is told by a two-story brick commercial building at the corner of Chadron Avenue and West 2nd Street in Chadron.
Can you imagine living in a sod house—not as a pioneer, but as a modern person? Some people do, and some e pioneer-era soddies survive as modern dwellings.
A recently occupied and well preserved sod house. Photo courtesy by Diane Laffin.
Half of a soddy, brought down by cattle after breaching the owner’s protective fencing during a blizzard many years ago.
