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The Great Plains Homestead Act: Pioneering Life on the American Frontier

Explore the challenges and triumphs of settlers on the Great Plains, from Exodusters to Bonanza Farms. Discover the self-sufficient homesteaders and the impact of legislation like the Morrill Act.

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The Great Plains Homestead Act: Pioneering Life on the American Frontier

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  1. The Great Plains

  2. Homestead Act • Offered 160 acres of land free to any citizen or intended citizen who was head of the house hold. • From 1862 to 1900, up to 600,000 families took advantage of the governments offer.

  3. Exodusters • African Americans who moved from the post-Reconstruction South to Kansas.

  4. The Closing of the Frontier • Explorers asked Congress to protect the wilderness from settlement. • Yellowstone National Park was created by the government in 1872.

  5. Settlers meet the Challenges of the Plains • The frontier settlers faced extreme hardships droughts, floods, fires, blizzards, locust plagues, and occasional raids by outlaws and Native Americans. • Soddy or sod homes were freestanding houses made by stacking blocks of prairie turf, warm in the winter and cool in summer.

  6. Self-sufficient Homesteaders • Homesteaders had to be almost superhumanly self-sufficient. • Women often worked beside the men in the fields plowing the land and planting and harvesting crop. • Skilled in doctoring from snakebites to crushed limbs.

  7. Morrill Act • Gave federal land to states to help finance agricultural colleges. • Hatch act established agricultural experiment stations to inform farmers of new developments.

  8. Bonanza Farms • Railroad companies and investors created bonanza farms, enormous single crop spreads of 15,000-50,000 acres. • By 1900 the average farmer had nearly 150 acres under cultivation. • Some farmers mortgaged their land to buy more property, and as farms grew bigger, so did farmers’ debts.

  9. Bonanza Farms • Railroads charged Western farmers a higher fee than they did farmers in the East. • The railroads claimed that they were only doing business, but farmers resented being taken advantage of.

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