Chapter 14

Adams County Record Story

Bliss "Garage Warming"

Back in the pioneer days of Dakota, homesteaders, because of meager capital and lack of modern transportation facilities, were forced to tax their ingenuity to construct their homes and buildings. From these conditions evolved the sod shanty, which not so many years ago dotted the prairies.

Today, with present transportation methods, we have an adequate supply of lumber, brick, cement, tile and other necessary building materials. Hard hit by drought and depression, Dakota farmers, however, are unable to take advantage of these materials to complete their building needs and for many years the building industry in the state has been stagnant.

Yet, from government survey, it is estimated that 80 per cent of farm housing in North Dakota west of Jamestown is inadequate and the need for other buildings is equally urgent.

An experiment which may revolutionize the type of farm buildings and give impetus to the building industry on the Dakota prairies is underway in Adams County on the Scoria Lily ranch of Col. Paul S. Bliss, 12 miles east of Hettinger. With the purpose of developing an inexpensive, yet adequate type of farm building, Bliss is now constructing a rammed earth garage, the first rammed earth building ever constructed in North Dakota.

With work on the building practically completed, Bliss has set Sunday, Dec. 1, between the hours of 1 and 5 p.m., as the date for the official warming of the rammed earth garage. As the experiment has evoked such widespread interest, Bliss has issued an invitation to the public to attend the open house in order to inspect the new building.

At the official warming Bliss and C.A. Huber, construction engineer, will explain methods of constructing this type of farm building. Coffee and sinkers [doughnuts] will be served during the open house, Bliss said.

With ideal weather the past week, work on the garage has gone forward and everything will be in readiness for the official warming Sunday, Bliss reported while here Sunday on an inspection trip of the building. The construction crew has been working under the direction of James E. McIntyre of the Cedar Valley community, general foreman, and C.M. Hallan, Hettinger carpenter.

The idea of rammed earth construction is not new. It was used hundreds of years ago in the construction of buildings, long before homesteaders evolved the sod shack. Homes were built by this method in ancient Egypt. In England houses still standing were constructed hundreds of years ago. Rammed earth has long been used in the eastern part of the United States for dwellings and other buildings. Near Washington, D.C., a rammed earth home built in 1773 still stands intact and in use. But rammed earth is new to the west, the nearest approach to it having been the sod shacks constructed in the pioneer days.

If the garage building is satisfactory, Bliss envisions an upturn in farm buildings throughout the state. The farmer is in need not only of better homes but also of better chicken houses, hog houses, garages and other buildings. The building industry has lagged because farmers cannot afford expensive construction. If the garage is satisfactory, it will have demonstrated that by using elbow grease and a minimum of materials the farmer can provide for himself buildings of better average quality than now in use.

Bliss constructed his garage in the fall because that is the most feasible time for farm construction. The experience with the garage has demonstrated that freezing weather will not ruin rammed earth structures, so that farmers may begin construction of a building in the fall with the assurance that they can complete the work even though freezing weather occurs.

Rammed earth buildings, according to Bliss, are especially adapted to farms because they withstand cold and heat and because labor is the principal item. Some materials, including cement, roofing, windows and doors, must be purchased. The general use of rammed earth would therefore mean a boom in the materials industry since farmers are doing practically no building now.

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The general principles of rammed earth construction are these:

1. Practically any soil in North Dakota except gumbo and sand may be used.
2. Scrape the stubble from some spot in a wheat field, load up a truck with the surface earth and drop it on clean boards. Moisten only enough to lay the dust. Put about four or five inches of earth into ordinary forms such as you might use for concrete.
3. Tamp down with a rammer, weight about 1 pound, which any blacksmith or foundry can make. When pounding effects no more consolidation of soil and a ringing sound is heard, put in another four or five inch layer of soft earth and repeat the process. Remove forms, set them up on an adjoining section of wall. When tier is complete, put forms on part first rammed and proceed.
4. The walls will stand without any support and if protected from moisture should last, virtually forever. Cement plaster is a very good outside wall cover. Walls should be 12 inches thick for a one-story building and 18 inches thick for a two-story building with a set back of six inches for the top story. Concrete footings must be used extending one foot above the grade as rammed earth must not be in contact with soil because of moisture danger.

Further details of construction may be obtained from the bulletin, Rammed Earth Walls, U.S. Department of Agriculture farm bulletin No. 1500, which may be secured from the superintendent of documents, Washington, D.C., for five cents.

Letter to Thomas Logeland

Instructions for Building the Rammed Earth House

I just talked to H.M. Waldron [a Hettinger lumberman] over the telephone and ordered the materials for the garage and asked him to be sure to check up with you and be sure the material is ready for us to work with by at least 3 PM Saturday, October 12.

Would you please have the man with the wagon take it out there. There is a possibility I may be on this job about 1 PM. If it is raining the portland cement should be taken to the farm of B. Byron Bobb, which is just one mile from my land. (That is one mile west). They can recognize Bobb's farm by the fact that it is the only one around there with a very large planting of cottonwoods. These can be seen for miles around.

My land is the east half of section 12, Township 129, Range 94. It is exactly 12 miles east of Hettinger. Follow No. 12 until it slants off to Haynes and then continue on a straight line out of Hettinger.

There is an old stone house with battered roof, unoccupied, which is just across the section line from my land. There is a hill on my land a quarter mile north of the road out from Hettinger where there was formerly a house. You can see a pile of rock in a wall at the foot of the hill, that is where the material is to be dumped. If there is any question, Mr. Bobb can tell you just where the location is.

I would like to have a man with team and wagon and a scraper; one handy man with carpenter tools who will probably be the boss of the job; and one common laborer. I think from 50 to 60 cents should be enough for the man and the team and the man and tools, and about 35 cents for the common laborer. Any arrangements you make around these figures more or less, will be o.k. with me.

Letter to Bismarck Tribune Editor Gordon McGregor

Fall 1935

The garage is located on my Scoria Lily farm, just 12 miles east and a quarter mile north of the city of Hettinger in Adams County. My mother bought land there 25 years ago and I have added to it and propose to spend my declining years in rural peace and happiness far from the maddening crowds.

Of course I am assuming that the average annual rainfall will increase to a point where, while not as high as it should be for 100% farming, will nevertheless give us crops something like we had when the moisture average was at its height—about 1912. I am so confident that the average moisture per year will increase slowly, that I think North Dakota is a mighty good bet.

My real reason for putting up this garage, however, is that having traveled 40,000 miles over North Dakota in the last two years, I know how inadequate farm housing is. The farmers cannot buy anything consequently the lumber and material dealers are making nothing, and the farmer is sitting around moaning when, as a matter of fact, he could be using plain elbow grease to build himself good farm buildings and a good house using rammed earth.

Farmers west of Jamestown do virtually no fall plowing, therefore, from thrashing time to spring they have nothing to do except the usual farm chores. That is why I am building this garage in the fall—I want to test whether or not a freezing spell would ruin rammed earth. I personally do not think it will because there is very little water needed—only enough to make the soil moist so that it will not raise a dust when it is shoveled in.

Of course you have to put in a good cement footing for rammed earth since you cannot rest it on the soil which would absorb moisture and soon ruin the stucco finish and probably undermine the walls. Therefore you should have your footings extend at least one foot above the clay. The walls are one foot thick, and if you build a two story building the walls of the ground story should be 18 inches, and the second story 12 inches thick.