Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1995
Abstract
Students of American material culture have often viewed the arid, largely treeless Great Plains as an innovative source region of various aspects of western culture, especially those that gained expression on the landscape. While barbed wire and sod construction are two familiar examples, another exists in the front-gabled log dwelling, the dominant traditional building form of the Mountain and Inter-mountain Western frontier. Because the front-gabled log dwelling was indeed common on the Plains and reputedly absent in the forested, eastern United States, scholars have identified the Great Plains as the source region of this vernacular floorplan. Recent field and secondary research, however, has established the presence of the front-gabled log dwelling in the humid East, if not as the dominant frontier house type, then at least as a minority one. For this reason, though the front-gabled log dwelling became increasingly more common west of the humid prairies, it seems more accurate to describe the Great Plains as a zone of reinforcement, rather than one of origin or innovation. Viewed in this manner, the Great Plains nevertheless exerted a significant influence on the built landscape of the Mountain West.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:1 (Winter 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.