Walter and Anna Zion Homestead

Idalia vicinity
National Register 7/6/2005, 5YM.235

The Walter and Anna Zion Homestead has a long association with the Zion family, early homesteaders in the Idalia-Vernon area who farmed and ranched from 1910 until 1975.  Family descendants continue agricultural operations.  The homestead is a rare intact example of sod construction.  An ingenious adaptation utilized by many plains homesteaders to construct their first homes, sod houses were intended to be temporary, typically abandoned as frame housing became an affordable option.  Those that survived often underwent significant changes.  The Zion Homestead is the only known surviving collection of intact Colorado sod buildings without major changes.  The homestead has the potential to yield important information regarding sod building construction in Colorado.  Research at this site could yield information regarding regional variations in sod construction due to local soil composition and moisture content, as well as advanced construction techniques due to a later settlement period than the Midwest.  (Bunkhouse, 2004 photograph.)