Twenty-four years ago, at 61, Laura Shanklin did the unexpected. With the help of a cowboy friend, she hand-built a rock house in the Sonoran desert. Resorting to locally available materials, thousands of rocks, and hundreds of bags of cement, it took her 18 months of effort before she could call the 950-square-foot property her home.
Born in West Virginia, Ms. Shanklin, now 85, has lived in New York, Texas, Kentucky, California, Rhode Island, Vermont, Chicago, and Arizona over the years.
Ms. Shanklin, who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design for two years, has worked various jobs. After her second marriage, she had the opportunity to work at a construction company, fixing up houses and selling them.
So, how did she end up buying a property in the middle of an Arizona desert, where she could build a rock house without the assistance of any power tools? Ms. Shanklin said it has a lot to do with her daughter.
Ms. Shanklin’s daughter, who owns a lot of horses, thought this would be a great place as there is a lot of horse activity in the town.
“People go on trail rides, and they do roping, which is a big deal,” Ms. Shanklin told The Epoch Times.
So she and her daughter bought 42 acres of land. However, they later split it up and sold the land, but Ms. Shanklin kept 2 acres of the property for herself.
During this period, Ms. Shanklin befriended Arlie Swartz, a cowboy from Montana, who came up to the property with his horse.
The land was located near the bottom of a mostly dried-up riverbed, so there were naturally rocks of all shapes and sizes lying around the property.
“[Arlie] really liked the idea of building a rock house, and he was willing to do it, and I was too,“ Ms. Shanklin said. ”So we started.”
The rules during that time were also less stringent.
“You didn’t have to have a permit at the time,” she said. “I don’t know whether we would be able to do it now. We only had to have a permit for a septic system.”
The pair got to work by gathering thousands of rocks, hundreds of bags of cement, a tanker truck nearby for water to mix in, and scrap lumber from an old motel.
Sharing more about the process of bringing the rock house to fruition, Ms. Shanklin said: “We were only, like 62 years old, [and had] a lot more energy then. We lived on another piece of property in a trailer, you know. And came every day. Every day. We did it steadily.”
Mr. Swartz would place the rocks on the 2-foot-thick walls, while Ms. Shanklin mixed the concrete and worked on getting wood, which kindhearted people had donated, ready for the house.
Only after the roof was installed were they able to connect the electricity.
After the house was built, Mr. Swartz stayed in Wickenburg until he got really sick. His daughter then took him back to his home state of Montana, where he passed away in 2016.
In front of her home, there is a porch, perfect for enjoying the view and splendor that the Sonoran desert offers. Around the house, there are two Christmas trees, cactuses, palo verde trees, and mesquite trees.
The house boasts a living room with a fireplace in the middle, a kitchen on the left, a dining area, and a refrigerator. There are two bedrooms, a bathroom with a sink and toilet, and a separate shower area with rock walls, like the rest of the house.
According to Ms. Shanklin, the entire house cost $30,000. This includes the price of the land and the building costs.
These days, she lives in the house for most of the year, except during the summer when it gets really hot.
“It’s great to have your own house and not have to pay rent,” she said. “I wish everybody could have that.”
