Do You Live Near a Homestead?
There’s a good chance you do – Homesteading reached three of every five states. Is yours among them?
The Homestead Act of 1862 offered people 160 acres of free land – if they were willing to live on it, farm it, and build a home. This map shows the 30 homesteading states in which the government gave away 270 million acres. On the wall each state has a cutout that represents the proportion of homesteading land in that state. Can you see where homesteading was most important?
One hundred years ago the Congress passed the Homestead Act, probably the single greatest stimulus to national development ever enacted. Under the impetus of that Act and other laws, more than 1.1 billion acres…have been transferred to private and non-federal public ownership.
President John F. Kennedy, 1962
Courtesy hmdb.org
