I Built Terraced Retaining Walls With Old Tires

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Diagram in profile of the site the author purchased.
Diagram in profile of the site the author purchased.
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An intermingled retaining wall and tree limb. The wall might not last if the tree keeps growing.
An intermingled retaining wall and tree limb. The wall might not last if the tree keeps growing.
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To think one man with a shovel and a passenger car put up so many retaining walls by himself. The sheer scope of the work represented here would be impressive even more people and earth moving equipment had been involved!
To think one man with a shovel and a passenger car put up so many retaining walls by himself. The sheer scope of the work represented here would be impressive even more people and earth moving equipment had been involved!
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Drain pipes embedded in the wall disperse water to the meadow below the artificially created homesite.
Drain pipes embedded in the wall disperse water to the meadow below the artificially created homesite.
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Scavenged telephone poles, sawed into sections, became stairways. A local utility company actually delivered the poles at no cost to the author.
Scavenged telephone poles, sawed into sections, became stairways. A local utility company actually delivered the poles at no cost to the author.
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Reverse view of one landing and retaining wall.
Reverse view of one landing and retaining wall.

A little more than two years ago I purchased a two-acre residential lot in the bluff country of Iowa. The price seemed quite reasonable, but the challenge presented by the lot was formidable! This particular piece of property, you see, lay crudely up a long, steep hillside. However, it did afford a marvelous view of the agricultural valley below, and of the skyline of Omaha, Nebraska, 16 miles away. My homesite was part of a newly developed subdivision comprised of 42 lots. I chose to buy a sloping, south-facing site because it offered a chance to fulfill my dream of a passive solar retirement home in scenic surroundings. I just needed to figure out two things: Where would I put a house, and how could I make that house accessible?

How Would You Like to Be Asked a Million Times, “What Are You Doing, Anyway?”

The only exit from the nearby paved street onto my lot was a small, ill-shaped area just big enough — if it were level, which it wasn’t — to turn around a car. Obviously, that wouldn’t do. Since I had no money to rearrange the site’s topography, I tapped a less costly resource: my brain. Countless site plan sketches and endless hours climbing up and down the hillside later, a workable solution came to me like some sort of great vision: retaining walls. I needed terraced retaining walls. The parts of a plan for the lot fell into place.

I picked up my shovel and began what turned into a two-year “labor of love.” My task took almost every evening, every weekend, and a month of vacation to complete. The lot’s terrain was such that I couldn’t get earth-moving equipment to the spot, so I was limited to using my body and an ordinary spade, two 5-gallon plastic buckets for carrying dirt, a saw, and (over the two years) three pairs of sturdy work shoes.

“I Thought Maybe You Were Building Some Sort of Monument!”

  • Published on May 1, 1983
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