Homesteading the West

The government offered land in the West for settlers who lived on the land and farmed it for 5 years. Their was a limit on the number of acres that a settler could claim - 160 acres. Congress hoped that this would encourage small, independent farmers rather than plantations. In 6 months, Kansas and Nebraska had 224,500 acres that had been claimed. An authentic receipt issued to such a settler of that period shows a payment of $6.00for 160 acres of prairie land.

Actually land was divided into squares of 640 acres each and each square further divided into quarters of 160 acres each of which the quarters were available under the Homestead Act.

The provisions of the Homestead Act - living off the land for 5 years, were intended to keep speculators from taking huge tracts of free land and then selling them off in pieces at a profit such as the railroad baron did for $2.50 an acre.

It the these areas of remote land, the laws were near impossible to enforce, though, and land agents had so vast an area that they could not even make inspections of settler's claims. So, of course, the laws were frequently ignored or broken after a short time on the claim.

Here is an example: One federal regulation required that a settler build a 12 by 12 house with windows on his claim. To visit every house to make sure it was 12 by 12 with windows as well was just not possible. Some land sharks even build log cabins on wheels that rolled them from claim to claim. Another would build "minature" 12 inch by 12 inch cabins with sticks.


There was another way that settler's could increase their land - next time we look at pre-emptions.