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By the end of the 19th
century, over 570 million acres remained open to settlement, but very
little of this was usable for agriculture. As the Frontier moved west onto
the arid Great Plains, the amount of land a
homesteader
was allowed to claim was increased to 640 acres.
In
Wyoming ,
Montana,
and
Colorado
homesteading cut into the access of the large ranches to the public domain
where hundreds of thousands of cattle were grazed upon the open range, a
practice called free grazing. The ranchers fought back by themselves (or
their cowboys) homesteading prime spots which gave access to water. At
times tensions escalated into violence, conflicts called range wars, for
example, the Johnson County War in
Wyoming .
Ironically, the
Homestead Act was often
used as a scam. Usually, the land that was available was in too poor a
shape to farm on, especially in the middle of the plains where droughts
were common occurrences. Because of hardships like these, not many
families actually stayed for the entire five years.
Many corporations also
took advantage of this act. They would pay people to buy the
top-of-the-line property which contained an abundance of resources such as
timber, minerals, and oil. Then the settlers would claim later on that
they had "improved" the land. In reality, the improvements made to the
land were minimal.
The
Homestead Act of 1912
reduced the
homestead requirement from five to three years; however by this time
most of the land in the lower 48 states had already been taken.
The Taylor Grazing Act of
1934 substantially decreased the amount of land available to homesteaders
in the
West .
Because much of the prime land had been
homesteaded
decades earlier, successful
Homestead claims dropped
sharply after this time.
Homesteading
continued on a small scale in Alaska. Much of the remaining public domain
was included in the National Forests or is administered by the Bureau of
Land Management.
The Federal Land Policy
and Management Act of 1976 ended
homesteading;
the government believing that the best use of public lands was for them to
remain in government control. The only exception to this new policy was
Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986.
The last claim
under the
Homestead Act was made by
Kenneth Deardorff for 80 acres of land on the Stony River in south-western
Alaska. He fulfilled all requirements of the
Homestead Act in 1979, but
he did not actually receive his patent until May 1988. Therefore, he is
the very last person to receive the title to land claimed under the
provisions of the
Homestead Act.
Homestead
farmers, who claimed some 270 million acres over the years, became the
agricultural producers to the nation as a whole. Additionally, strong
communities with a commitment to social values, education, and personal
responsibility were spawned throughout the territories covered by the
Homestead lands.
The economic,
agricultural, and social stability generated by the
Homestead Act was utterly
inconceivable in other times and places -- and formed a large part of the
foundation of American prosperity in the 20th century.
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