Dugout of W. M. Dye

A plains dugout, as the Handbook of Texas describes it, was usually a rectangular pit five to seven feet deep and eight or ten feet wide, entered down steps cut into the ground. Log beams carried saplings or branches covered with grass and finally dirt, and floors were usually tamped earth. The steady temperature of the ground helped in summer and winter, but residents complained of snakes, spiders and salamanders in the roofs and of dirt falling onto the furniture, and now and then a cow stepped through. Once a house was built, the dugout often became a cellar.

What the plaque says

Dugout of W. M. Dye William Miles Dye was born in Kentucky in 1864 and moved to Texas with his parents in 1870. He settled in this area in 1891, one year after the organization of Armstrong County. By hauling rock from Palo Duro Canyon, Dye helped in the construction of the first county jail in Claude (13 mi. N). Still visible (10 yds. N) is the lower portion of the dugout he built for his family. Dugouts often were constructed in areas, such as the Texas Panhandle, where building materials were in short supply. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• Gem Theatre — 14 mi
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Lighthouse Trail — 20 mi
  The park's most walked trail, 2.8 miles each way across the canyon floor to the Lighthouse, a hoodoo of Triassic sandstone balanced on a pedestal of softer red shale.
• TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 21 mi
  A summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.

More markers nearby

• The S.P. Hamblen Family — 6.0 mi
• Hamblen Drive — 10 mi
• Site of Old Goodnight Ranch — 11 mi
• Charles Goodnight — 11 mi