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... ches. Others hired phony claimants or bought abandoned land. The General Land Office was under funded and unable to hire a sufficient number of investigators for its widely scattered local offices.
As a result, overworked and underpaid investigators were often susceptible to bribery. Of some 500 million acres dispersed by the General Land Office between 1862 and 1904, only 80 million acres went to homesteaders. Small farmers acquired more land under the Homestead Act in the 20 th century than in the 19 th. Homesteaders marked their claims with some evidence of occupancy.
For example, four posts to indicate the corners of a shack, or a three-foot hole to represent a well. Many were lured to the area by published claims promising incredibly abundant farmland, in a place alleged to be harsh and unforgiving. Although this offer seemed ideal to farmers wishing to move west, experience proved that often it was otherwise. V CLAIM STAKING AND STRUGGLES The Homestead Act offered cheap, fertile land to immigrants.
American railroad companies advertised in Europe to attract immigrants to the American West. However, by the time most immigrants arrived in America, the best land had already been taken. Unable to move on to the western farmlands, most immigrants stayed in America's eastern and midwestern cities. The Homestead Act's lenient terms proved the undoing of many settlers.
Claimants need not own equipment or know anything about farming. In the end, most of those who purchased land under the act came from areas quite close to their new homestead (Iowans moved to Nebraska, Minnesotans to South Dakota, and so on). Newer laws allowed homesteaders additional land if they planted 40 acres of trees, a practical impossibility. Or they could buy cheap land in the arid high plains, requiring costly irrigation.
There were many obstacles to be overcome before this land could be used for farming. Because the plains were largely without trees, log cabins could not be built. Instead, settlers cut strips of sod from the ground and made houses by piling them one on top of the other. Door and window openings were outlined with poles and the structure was covered with cow or buffalo hides.
Unfortunately, many of them were not properly built and the farmers and their families had to live in drafty houses that leaked whenever it rained. The lack of wood also meant a lack of fuel for heating, so the first settlers used buffalo dun ("buffalo chips") and slow burning hay. However, these heating methods proved unsatisfactory, and the problem was not solved until the railroads brought coal to the plains. The tough, matted sod of the plains resisted the farmer's plow. John Deere had produced a steel plow before the Civil War. It was the first plow that would cut deep, clean furrows through the tough sod.
However, it was too expensive for most new settlers. The farmer therefore resorted to hiring professional teams of men with the plows that would break the soil. Once broken, the soil could be more easily plowed in subsequent years. The plains were dry and arid. There was an almost perpetual scarcity of water. Rivers and streams were few and far apart.
Settlers dug wells at least two to three hundred feet deep, but then had difficulty getting the water to the surface. Windmills driven by the near continuous winds of the prairie provided power, but windmills cost more money than most settlers could afford. Sometimes in the settler's yard there stood barrels for storing water covered with pieces of cloth. Both men and animals drank from the same barrels and before long "prairie fever, " or typhoid, swept through the country, killing many people. Rain was generally scarce, but in the 1870 s the Great Plains experienced a period of generous rainfall that encouraged settlers to remain despite other hardships. However, by the 1880 s every possible natural disaster fell upon them-drought, blizzard, grasshoppers by the millions, cyclones, and scalding heat waves.
Cattlemen resisted the dividing up of the open range by farmers. In the end it was barbed wire that decided the war in favor of the homesteaders. Farmers faced heavy debt, lack of cash, expensive rail transportation and grain storage, and market fluctuations. Not all who claimed a homestead stayed for the required five years. By 1900 two-thirds of all farmers had given up and moved away or lost their property to foreclosure. Eventually, though, as homesteading families learned to survive the elements, they formed settlements.
And as the number of homesteaders increased, the settlements grew into towns. These towns and communities provided pickets of culture in the still largely unsettled West. The challenges, however, also led to opportunities for those who stayed. Six months after the Homestead Act was passed, the federal act providing for a transcontinental railroad was signed. Railroads provided easy transportation for homesteaders (many of whom were new immigrants lured by railroad companies eager to sell off the excess land granted them at inflated prices).
The new rail lines also provided a means by which homesteaders could receive manufactured goods. Through catalog houses like Montgomery Ward, homesteaders could order farm tools, plows, windmills, barbed wire, linens, weapons, even houses, and have them delivered via the rails. As homesteaders populated the territories, they filed for statehood, and built prairie schools. In many areas, the schools became the focal points of community life, serving as churches, polling places, and gathering spots for clubs and organizations. VI CONCLUSION Although the Homestead Act was included in the Republican Party platform of 1860, support for the idea began decades earlier. Even under the Articles of Confederation, before 1787, the distribution of government lands generated much interest and discussion.
As the U. S. continued to grow, overlapping claim and border disputes were common. The Land Ordinance of 1785 established a system for dividing land into territories. Legislative efforts to improve homesteading laws were consistently blocked because Southern congressmen were afraid that rapid settlement of western territories would give rise to states populated by small farmers opposed to slavery. Others were afraid of losing cheap labor.
After the South seceded, Congress passed and President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act of 1862 into law. The new law stated that men and women who were heads of household were eligible to homestead. They would be given 160 acres and would have to improve it with a dwelling and farm it for five years. After five years the homesteaders could file for title. The new law gave immigrants, women and blacks an opportunity to succeed on their own. The first homesteaders settled and struggled with the many hardships of pioneer life.
They carved out livelihoods in the land, raised families and built homes, roads, churches and schools. Nurtured by the agricultural industry, communities prospered across rural America. The homesteader's life was difficult. Lack of lumber meant drafty sod homes that were hard to heat.
The ground was difficult to break and most pioneers could not afford the necessary equipment. The settlers endured drought, blizzards, grasshoppers, cyclones and heat waves. Despite the hardships, many did survive and formed settlements. BIBLIOGRAPHY Fertig, G. (2000, November). Achieving equity on the Great Plains: Women's rights and the Homestead Act of 1862. Paper presented at the 80 th NCSS Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX.
Gale Group (2001, October). Homestead Act passed, May 20, 1862. Retrieved from DISCovering U. S. History. Online edition. , Discovering Collection.
Farmington Hills, Mich. Web site: web Hagel, C. (2003, September 8). New Homestead Act would help rural America. Grand Forks Herald. Potter, L. A. (1999).
The Homestead Act of 1862. Cobblestone, 20 (2), 4. Red River Valley Genealogical Society (n. d. ). Time passages, genealogy of the Dakotas. Retrieved from, Web site: web Schaetzl, R.
J. (n. d. ). Settlement of the new frontier: The Homestead Act of 1862. Retrieved from Michigan State University, GEO 333: Geography of Michigan and the Great Lakes Region Web site: web South Dakota Department of Tourism and State Development (n. d. ).
Prairie Pioneers. Retrieved from South Dakota Department of Tourism Media, Web site: web facts / pioneers . asp US Department of Education ERIC (2003, January 14). The Homestead Act of 1862. Retrieved from US National Archives & Records Administration Web site: web digital classroom / lessons /homestead act 1862 /homestead act. html U.
S. National Archives & Records Administration (1995, 1998). Homestead Act (1862). Retrieved from Teaching with Documents: Using Primary Sources From the National Archives Web site: web
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Research essay sample on Homestead Act Barbed Wire
