THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT 235 



will protect with their lives, but to one who " lives in the open/' no 

 truer or more loyal friend can be found than in these rough men of the 

 hills. Frugal, but hospitable to the extreme, they take great pleasure 

 in the entertainment, in their humble way, of strangers who may chance 

 among them. 



Many of the homesteaders in this region after struggling along for a 

 number of years, often facing death through cold or starvation, were 

 compelled to relinquish their claims and leave the hills. So to-day one 

 may find in many places the old dilapidated " soddy " and the scrubby, 

 straggling timber claims of those who gave up the fight. On the other 

 hand, many of those who managed to stay in the region have prospered. 

 The sod shanty was for many years the characteristic habitation of the 

 homesteader's family. This home was added to from time to time 

 until a rather low, three- or four-roomed house of sod with plastered 

 walls afforded much more comfort than the old conditions. At first the 

 roof was also made of sod, but in later years the board or tar-paper roof 

 has been substituted for the leaky sod. Those who have gone into the 

 hills in the past few years and have taken claims under the Kincaid act 

 have commonly built shacks of rough boards. Many of the older resi- 

 dents of the Sand Hills have lived for a number of years in very com- 

 fortable frame houses with most of the conveniences of the common 

 farm house. Even the cement block has invaded the hills, and now 

 there are numerous ranches with cement-block homes and round about 

 the many other well-constructed buildings of the up-to-date ranch. 

 Thus the development of the civilization and the architecture of the 

 Sand Hills has passed through a number of periods in many ways as 

 interesting and as remarkable as the evolution of the landscape and the 

 vegetation of this great pasture domain. 



