The William R. Dowse House, more commonly known as the Dowse Sod House, is a sod house in Custer County in the central portion of the state of Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. It was built in 1900 and occupied until 1959. After a long period of neglect, it was restored beginning in about 1981, and opened as a museum in 1982. The house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, as "an excellent example of the sod house phenomenon", and as one of the few surviving sod houses in Nebraska. Sod houses on the Great Plains The Homestead Act of 1862 was a major factor in opening the Great Plains to white settlement. Under the provisions of the Act, settlers could obtain title to a quarter-section (160 acres, or ) of land for a nominal fee, provided that they built a house, made certain improvements, farmed the land, and occupied the site for at least five years. Settlers in the regions east of the Missouri River had found ample trees with which to build log houses. The eastern quarter of Nebraska was also well supplied with timber. However, as settlers moved further west, they encountered the treelessness that had led Major Stephen H. Long, exploring the region in 1820, to label it the "Great American Desert". Especially before the arrival of the railroad, the cost of importing building materials was prohibitive; and many homesteaders had spent all that they had on farming equipment, and could barely afford the filing fees for their land claims. There is no consensus among scholars regarding the origin of sod construction on the Plains. Some maintain that the inspiration came from the earth lodges of the local native peoples, including the Omahas and the Pawnees. However, these earth lodges were circular in cross-section, and built upon heavy timber frameworks. It has also been suggested that the idea of building with sod came from European immigrants, either Russian-Germans, who are known to have built rammed earth dwellings in the Plains, or immigrants from the British Isles, particularly from Ireland, where turf houses were built with stone foundations and frames to support the turf. None of these closely resembled the unframed sod-block houses built in the Midwestern United States, but they might have engendered the idea of building with earth. A simple sod house could be built in about