A homestead act is one of three United States federal laws that gave an applicant freehold title to an area called a "homestead" – typically 160 acres (65 hectares or one-fourth section) of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River.
The original homestead act, known as the Homestead Act of 1862, was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The law required three steps: file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title. Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, including freed slaves, could file an application to claim a federal land grant. The occupant also had to be 21 or older, had to live on the land for five years and show evidence of having made improvements.
Because much of the prime low-lying alluvial land along rivers had been homesteaded by the turn of the twentieth century, a major update called the Enlarged Homestead Act was passed in 1909. It targeted land suitable for dryland farming, increasing the number of acres to 320.[7] In 1916, the Stock-Raising Homestead Act targeted settlers seeking an 640 acres (260 ha) of public land for ranching purposes.[7]
Only about 40 percent of the applicants who started the process were able to complete it and obtain title to their homestead land.[8] Eventually 1.6 million homesteads were granted and 270,000,000 acres (420,000 sq mi) of federal land were privatized between 1862 and 1934, a total of 10% of all lands in the United States.[9] Homesteading was discontinued in 1976, except in Alaska, where it continued until 1986.
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The intent of the Homestead Act of 1862 was to liberalize the homesteading requirements of the Preemption Act of 1841. Leading advocates were Andrew Johnson[10], George Henry Evans and Horace Greeley.[11][12][13] The "yeoman farmer" ideal was powerful in American political history, and plans for expanding their numbers through a homestead act were rooted in the 1850s. The "Free soil" party of 1848-52 and the new Republican Party after 1854 demanded that the new lands opening up in the west be available to independent farmers and not be bought out by rich slave owners who would buy up the best land and work it with slaves, forcing the white farmers onto marginal lands. This was the basis of the Free Soil Party of 1848, and a main theme of the Republican Party.[14] Homestead laws were defeated by Southerners who feared it would attract European immigrants and poor Southern whites to the west.[15][16][17]
After the South seceded and their delegations left Congress in 1861, the path was clear of obstacles, and the act was passed.[3][4][18]
The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 gave 320 acres (1.3 km2) to farmers who accepted more marginal lands that could not be irrigated. A massive influx of new farmers eventually led to massive land erosion and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.[19][20]
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading;[4][21] the government believed that the best use of public lands was for them to remain in government control. The only exception to this new policy was in Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986.[4]
The last claim under this Act was made by Ken Deardorff for 80 acres (32 ha) of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. He fulfilled all requirements of the homestead act in 1979 but did not receive his deed until May 1988. He is the last person to receive title to land claimed under the provisions of the homestead acts.[22]
While distributing much land to farmers at minimal cost, homesteading took place on lands that had recently been cleared of Native Americans. Economically, the program was a large scale redistribution of land from autonomous tribes to taxpaying farmers, a process carried out directly when Indian reservations were broken up into holdings by individual families (especially in Oklahoma, which had originally been designated as the Indian Territory).
The homestead acts were much abused.[4] Although the intent was to grant land for agriculture, in the arid areas east of the Rocky Mountains, 640 acres (2.6 km2) was generally too little land for a viable farm (at least prior to major public investments in irrigation projects). In these areas, homesteads were instead used to control resources, especially water. A common scheme was for an individual acting as a front for a large cattle operation to file for a homestead surrounding a water source under the pretense that the land was being used as a farm. Once granted, use of that water source would be denied to other cattle ranchers, effectively closing off the adjacent public land to competition. That method could also be used to gain ownership of timber and oil-producing land, as the federal government charged royalties for extraction of these resources from public lands. On the other hand, homesteading schemes were generally pointless for land containing "locatable minerals," such as gold and silver, which could be controlled through mining claims under the Mining Act of 1872, for which the federal government did not charge royalties.
There was no systematic method used to evaluate claims under the homestead acts. Land offices relied on affidavits from witnesses that the claimant had lived on the land for the required period of time and made the required improvements. In practice, some of these witnesses were bribed or otherwise colluded with the claimant.
Although not necessarily fraud, it was common practice for the eligible children of a large family to claim nearby land as soon as possible. After a few generations, a family could build up a sizable estate. [23] However, working a farm of 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) would not have been feasible for a homesteader using 19th-century animal-powered tilling and harvesting. The acreage limits were reasonable when the act was written.
According to Hugh Nibley, much of the rain forest west of Portland, Oregon was acquired by the Oregon Lumber Company by illegal claims under the Act.[24]
The act was later imitated with some modifications by Canada in the form of the Dominion Lands Act. Similar acts – usually termed the selection acts – were passed in the various Australian colonies in the 1860s, beginning in 1861 in New South Wales.
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