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Homestead History

Uncle Sam Is Rich Enough To Give Us All A Farm

Cowboys riding off into the sunset. Indians in war paint. Raw-boned men in fringed leggings accompanied by sallow-faced women in faded calico dresses and slat sunbonnets. Wagons rocking slowly west under crisply starched canvas covers. Prim, thin-lipped schoolmarms and grizzled, wild-eyed prospectors. There is perhaps no more overly romanticized and misunderstood time in history than the settling of the American frontier. In today's popular consciousness, the frontier exists in some hazy period of the nineteenth century, populated with larger-than-life stereotypes and events.

In reality, the "frontier" existed for much of the United States' history. From the time the first European settlers reached the North American continent, there have been individuals and groups living on the "frontier," the edge of the "wilderness" just beyond the grasp of what they considered to be "civilization." For the Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution in England, the frontier was the Massachusetts coastline in the 1620s. For Daniel Boone, the frontier was Kentucky in the 1770s.

For the residents of Skunk City, a wild boomtown later known as Chicago, the frontier was Illinois in the 1840s. For pioneer author Laura Ingalls Wilder, the frontier was South Dakota in the 1880s. The U.S. has had many frontiers with many pioneers, each existing in its own unique place, time, and circumstances.

Homesteading was a way of life created, in effect, by the U.S. government. The Homestead Act, passed by Congress on May 20, 1862, declared that any citizen of the United States could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. After payment of a nominal filing fee, homesteaders were to "improve" their land by living on it, building a dwelling, and planting crops. If the settlers fulfilled these requirements, and remained on their homestead for a period of five years, the land became their property. Via the Homestead Act, vast amounts of the public domain -- 270 million acres, or 10% of the continental United States -- were opened up to private citizens.

The Act's minimal and seemingly lenient requirements proved insurmountable for many would-be homesteaders. Many homesteaders took claims with little or no farming experience, and growing crops in the harsh conditions of the West was a difficult task for even the most seasoned farmers. Many homesteads in the arid plains were too small to yield a profitable crop, and the cost of irrigation far exceeded the value of the land. Over the 124-year history of the Act, more than 2 million individuals filed claims. Of these, only 783,000 -- less than half -- ultimately obtained the deeds for their homesteads.

Despite the odds, thousands of settlers from all walks of life -- including single women, recently freed slaves, and newly arrived immigrants -- went to the frontier to meet the challenge of "proving up" their claims and keeping their "free" land.

Aside from native-born Americans, immigrants from Scandinavia, Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, France, Italy, Spain, and Ireland flooded into the Territory. Herman Untermohle, a German immigrant, arrived in Montana in 1888 after a chance meeting in New York: "My father ran a carriage factory in Hildesheim, Germany. At 27 years of age my mother sent me to New York, to learn something of carriage making in the United States. I arrived in October of 1887. I remained for the winter, observing and working in the Brewster Carriage Factory, and having a good time. That winter, I met a couple named Medley, who had a ranch near Big Timber, Montana, who told me about hunting and many interesting things of the West. In March, I decided to take a trip West to visit them." Once Untermohle made it to Montana, he stayed for the next thirty years.

Questions:

1. In what year was the Homestead Act Passed?

2. How did the homesteaders have to improve their land?

3. How much land was made available through the Homestead Act?

4. Why did so many Homesteaders fail?

5. How many homesteaders obtained the deeds for their homesteads?

6. What types of people were moving to the West?

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