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An Invitation to the World
For over a century the Homestead Act fed people's desire for land and a home of their own. It materialized an American dream.
Today's immigrants from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America, and elsewhere share a dream with the homesteaders who came to America's interior in the post-Civil War era. Like today, it was a roiling, uncertain time of rapid social and economic changemigrants leaving northeastern factories; formerly enslaved people leaving Southern plantations; sharecroppers leaving worn-out fields. Many headed west. All acted on the promise of a dream: mobility and property for people who had none, or who wanted more.
Homesteaders Took Risks, Found America
Twenty-five thousand Europeans, most of them German, crossed the Atlantic in the first half of 1862. The precise number of immigrants who followed with the intention to homestead, or how many first lived and worked in the cities before they caught "land fever," is unknown.
By 1870 one-fourth the population of Nebraska was foreign-born. By the turn of the century over two million Anglo-Americans, Swedes, Italians, Danes, Finlanders, Hollanders, Icelanders, Hungarians, Russians, Bohemians, Poles, and Ukrainians had relocated to the Great Plainshomesteading's heart. "Free land," but also civil freedom, the perception of unlimited resources, independence, and a chance for free education drove the "briskness in immigration."
Territories and states coined names like "The Treasure State" (for Montana, which had rich mineral deposits), enhancing their appeal. The Exoduster movement, led by Benjamin Singleton, a carpenter and undertaker from Tennessee, promoted a near-Utopian vision of homesteading as a way for former slaves to get land and homes in Kansas. Many African Americans, including women, managed to file and "prove up" (fulfill legal requirements) on claims.
Homesteading states mounted booster campaigns to entice emigrants. Women from age 21, including those who had been deserted, could take "free" land. Many did. While homesteading, some worked as domestics to earn cash. Karolina Miller Krause, an Austrian immigrant, did field workusually considered men's workto help buy a farm.
Foreign-language advertisements and reports printed in the US and distributed in Eastern Europe, where crop failures led to famine in the 1870s, promoted the idea of an American land of plenty. One Polish-language article published in 187S described a rail tour through bountiful farmlands. The Bissie family, from Poland, found work on American farms.
Despite immigrants' practical skills and willingness to work, not everyone welcomed them. Today's Twitter feeds could be responding to an opinion the New York Times published in 1907: "The opposition to the present immigrant is uneconomic, illogical, and un-American."
1915 was a "miracle" year for homesteaders. Abundant rain, bumper wheat harvests, and high grain prices (owed to the Great War in Europe) caused Great Plains economies to boom. Government posters declared "Food Will Win the War!" But as the war ended, corn and wheat prices dropped. Economic depression settled in, as did severe drought. Many homesteaders abandoned suddenly unprofitable claims. Yet even in the 1930sAmerica's bitterest decadehomesteaders moved westward. Undeterred, or made desperate by the Great Depression, they filed new claims.
Cycles of boom and bust, soaring hope and deep despair, would temper but not wholly destroy homesteading's promise. Many failed to "prove up" their claims. Many moreacross 30 states, from diverse national, cultural, and economic stratafaced drought, prairie fires, hailstorms, tornadoes, grasshopper plagues, and often crushing loneliness. They persevered.
In 1976, the US Congress repealed the Homestead Act. Over 123 years, homesteading gave hope to many. It offered immigrants a road map that took them from serfdom to citizen- and property-ownership. It offered the nation's own disenfranchisedthe formerly enslaved, veterans of civil and world wars, emigrants from northeastern factory towns, and southern sharecroppersmen and women alikea chance.
Wild Lands to Farmlands
Public Domain Lands Spur Debate
1785 Public Land Survey System (PLSS), first proposed by Thomas Jefferson, is established to divide public domain lands
1800 Land Act reduces the size of a unit of public land from 640 acres (one square mile) to 320 acres (half-parcel)
1803 Louisiana Purchase from France adds 800,000 square miles, doubling the public domain
1830 Indian Removal Act adds 40,000 square miles to public domain lands east of the Mississippi
1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain sets northern border of US; adds 28,000 square miles to public domain
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo with Mexico adds 528,000 square miles to public domain (Texas excluded)
1848-52 Free Soilers support free homesteading and oppose slavery in new territories
1849 California gold rush
1850s The fight in the House and Senate over public lands builds to a crescendo. Many decisions turn on whether slavery will be extended to the western territories
1853 Gadsden Purchase of parts of Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico adds 123,000 square miles to public domain
1860 Abraham Lincoln elected President
1861 Civil War begins
1862 Homestead Act offers 160 acres of public land free to homesteaders; Pacific Railway and Morrill Land-Grant College acts
1863 Daniel Freeman and other homesteaders begin to file claims, mostly in the Great Plains states and Nebraska and Dakota territories
Populating the Land
1865 Civil War ends; Reconstruction in South begins
1866 Congress extends homesteading to the five public land states in the SouthFlorida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas
1877 Following Reconstruction's failure and Southern states' enactment of the notorious Black Codes and Pig Laws, African Americans migrate North and West. Many seek free lands and greater tolerance in Kansas, a Union stronghold during the Civil War. They become known as "Exodusters"
1889 Oklahoma Territory opens to homesteaders with a "land run." Thousands join the frenzied sprint to stake claims
ca. 1901 First 4-H club
1902 Land Reclamation Act, to provide water to arid and semiarid West and Southwest
Peaks and Valleys
1901-20 Homesteading peaks; Land Office issues over 800,000 patents
1913 Willa Cather publishes Prairie Trilogy
1914-18 World War I
1929 Stock Market crashes
1930-40 Land Office issues 40,000 homestead patents, many in the Southwest
1934-36 Dust Bowl
1936 Homestead National Monument of America established; Rural Electrification Act
Resurgence and Repeal
1939-45 World War II
1946 Department of Agriculture establishes Farmers Home Administration
1948 Center-pivot irrigation delivers water to crop fields
ca. 1950 Manufacture of most horse-drawn farm equipment ceases
1956 Congress passes Interstate Highway Act, allowing faster transport of farm goods to market
1960-86 Public lands in Alaska opened to homesteaders
1976 Congress repeals Homestead Act in lower 48 states
1986 Congress repeals Homestead Act in Alaska
1988 Last homestead patent issued
Tallgrass Prairie Reborn
Between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains are remnants of the grassy expanse once called the Great American Desert. Foot-high buffalo grass and blue grama grasses covered the dry area east of the Rockies. Needle-and-thread grass and little bluestem dominated the middle belt.
The easternmost lands of the lower Missouri valley, where rainfall is higher, are home to the tallgrass prairie. Its big bluestem, little bluestem, Indiangrass, and switchgrass rise 8 or 9 feet tall, with roots that reach 15 to 25 feet down into the soil. Plants native to the tallgrass prairie are tough. They survive grazing, fire, and mowing.
By the 1930s successive droughts and overgrazing had destroyed much of the tallgrass prairie in eastern Nebraska. Plants native to the more arid prairies (western wheatgrass, blue grama, and buffalo grass) invaded.
In 1939 the National Park Service began restoring the tallgrass prairie here by planting grass seed from a nearby farm. Restoration continues today with methods like controlled burning. Burning in spring, before non-native grasses begin to grow, incinerates dead plant debris. This allows sun and rain to penetrate and releases nutrients that promote growth and seed yields.
Not just tall grasses but also other plants and flowers (330 species) thrive here. The tallgrass prairie ecosystem includes trees, birds, mammals (60 species), insects, and microorganisms. Songbirds like the dickcissel and meadowlark often sway precariously atop grasses and shrubs. They winter in South America and Mexico, then migrate to North American tallgrass prairies to nest and raise their young.
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Homestead National Monument preserves the T-shaped, 160-acre claim that Daniel Freeman filed on January 1, 1863. It includes the school that some of Freeman's children attended, a typical eastern Nebraska cabin, and 100 acres of restored tallgrass prairie.
The park is open daily except Thanksgiving, December 25, and January 1. Hours vary seasonally; check our website.
Start at the Heritage Center, which offers information, exhibits, a bookstore, and a film. Visit the Palmer-Epard Cabin, see pioneer farm implements in the Education Center, and walk the trails through tallgrass prairie. Enjoy the Heritage and Education centers' picnic areas Check our website for special events and ranger-led talks. Call ahead for group tours.
FOR YOUR SAFETY
• Stay on trails. • Watch for poison ivy and nettles. • Check for ticks. • Beware of steep dropoffs near Cub Creek. • Fires and smoking are prohibited. • Pets must be leashed, and are not allowed in buildings or on trails. • Bicycles and vehicles are prohibited on trails. • For firearms regulations check the website.
Federal law prohibits removing natural or historic features.
Emergencies call 911
Accessibility
We strive to make our facilities, services, and programs accessible to all; call or check our website.
Source: NPS Brochure (2016)
Homestead National Historical Park January 13, 2021
Homestead National Monument of America January 3, 1939 (established)
Homestead National Monument of America March 19, 1936 (authorized)
Brochures ◆ Site Bulletins ◆ Trading Cards
The contents of brochures, site bulletins and trading cards (denoted with a colored caption) can be viewed by clicking on the cover. Most modern-day brochures, however, are cover only (denoted by a white caption) due to photograph copyrights. These items are historical in scope and are intended for educational purposes only; they are not meant as an aid for travel planning. The dates under each brochure do not reflect the complete range of years that a particular brochure was issued.
