The Homestead Act

|The Homestead Act 1862 |
|The first Homestead Act was passed in 1841. The terms of this act allowed people to purchase 160 acres of Plains land at a very small price. |
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|In a bid to encourage more people to move from the overcrowded eastern states onto the Plains, the US government passed another Homestead Act in 1862 |
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|Under the terms of this Act, available Plains land (2.5 million acres) was divided into sections or homesteads of 160 acres. People could now claim 160 |
|acres of land. The only requirement on their part was that they paid a small administration charge and built a house and lived on the land for at least |
|5 years. |
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|In 1873 a further Act called the Timber Culture Act was passed. Under the terms of this act people could have 160 acres of land free provided that at |
|least 40 acres of it was planted with trees. Anyone could lay claim to the land even foreign immigrants. |
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|However, although 160 acres seemed like a vast amount of land, it was not enough to support a family if they wished to make a