The Minor Sod House, also known as Minor Post Office, near

McDonald, Kansas McDonald is a city in Rawlins County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 113. History A post office was opened in Celia (an extinct town) in 1880, but it was moved to McDonald in 1888. McDonald was na ...

, is a

sod house The sod house or soddy was an often used alternative to the log cabin during frontier settlement of the Great Plains of Canada and the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s. Primarily used at first for animal shelters, corrals, and fences, ...

that was built c. 1907. It is a one-story building with a gabled rectangular section about with sod brick walls, plus a wood-frame

lean-to A lean-to is a type of simple structure originally added to an existing building with the rafters "leaning" against another wall. Free-standing lean-to structures are generally used as shelters. One traditional type of lean-to is known by its Finn ...

section, all covered by a corrugated, galvanized metal roof. The exterior is cement and stucco in the two sections. with It was used as the first post office of Minor, Kansas, with first postmaster Tom Minor. A grocery store built by Minor not far away then served as the post office, then it returned to the soddy when the grocery store closed, until the post office itself closed in November 1920. It was listed on the U.S.

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2005. It served historically as a single dwelling and as a post office.

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Kansas Houses completed in 1907 Houses in Rawlins County, Kansas Sod houses National Register of Historic Places in Rawlins County, Kansas {{Kansas-NRHP-stub