Homestead Act 1862

• homestead = small farms
• aimed to settle the West with Individual farms
• 160 acres of land for $10
• you could claim if you were;

  • head of the family
  • single and over 21
  • ex-slaves
  • women
  • intending to be a US citizen
• once you made you claim, you would work on your lands
• you could only make 1 claim
• once someone had lived on their land for 5 years, they could pay $30 and prove up (the land is officially theirs)
• broke the Permanent Indian Frontier
• by 1879 over 6 million acres of land had become homesteads (37500 farms) - :)
• new parts of the plains were settled in for the first time - eg Nebraska - :)
• the act encouraged immigration from Europe
• 60% of claims were never proved up because farming was hard :(
• despite the Act trying to get individual farms on the plains, rich land owners abused the act by getting their employees to pay for 160 acres and then buying the land off them
• overall 16% of the 500 million acres of land was homestead - the rest was railroad - :(
• Indigenous peoples of the plain could not claim land
• it was fulfilling Manifest Destiny