A pioneer's house was very simple to live in. They made them from logs that they cut down to clear their land. It was a lot of hard work. They made their roof with hollowed out logs and put them on top of the house, so that when it rained, the rain ran through the hollow logs to the ground. It stayed out of their house. They filled in the cracks with mud to keep the wind from blowing through the cabin.

When sawmills were built it became easier to build each pioneer's home because they didn't have the hard work of chopping all the different sizes and shapes themselves. Now the sawmill would do that for them.

The log cabins weren't very big, but it kept them from snow and rain. It also kept them warm. The early pioneers had just a one room log cabin and everyone in the family shared that room to sleep and eat. Later when the sawmills made building easier, the houses had more rooms for everyone. They didn't have a living room like we do. They had a very small kitchen with a table. There was a ladder to get to the bedrooms that were upstairs. Usually the children would sleep up on the top floor. The parents would sleep in a small room downstairs. There would be a medium-sized room that would be the family room. They would have a fire burning in the fireplace. They had braided rugs to walk on. They had a dirt floor where they would dance and sing. They had a lot of dances with family and friends.

There was no indoor plumbing. This means that they had a well outside to get water that they used for drinking, cooking, and taking a bath. The bathrooms were called outhouses. The outhouses would be in a little shack outside the house. It would have one or two holes cut in a wood bench for people to sit on and there were holes dug in the ground for things to fall in. The outhouse would have a little design cut in it to let in fresh air and let out BAD air. The holes were little because the wind would blow through and make it colder if the holes were too big.