As we discuss the in’s and out’s of real estate and finance, it’s sometimes fun to see how all of this started in the first place. An early and interesting land development in our country’s history was the Homestead Act.
A key component of America’s westward expansion in the 19th century was the government’s distribution of public land to “free farmers,” ordinary citizens who had a desire to establish themselves and their families through agriculture. The Homestead Act of 1862, signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, introduced a system by which these citizens could claim for themselves a piece of the public lands—up to 160 acres—that were controlled by the federal government. The Homestead Act gave farmers a three-step process that allowed them to obtain the land without having to purchase it directly.
1) File an application for a specific homestead.
2) Improve the land through farming or other, provable means.
3) File for deed of title.
The Act itself was the culmination of over a decade of legislative debate, which included several failed attempts to pass a bill through Congress. Opposition to any such legislation had largely been led by representatives from the plantation states of the South, who feared the competition such free farms would create. With the secession of the Confederacy in 1860, the remaining members of Congress were able to pass the legislation virtually unopposed.
Despite the attempt to ease the process, less than half of the homestead applicants managed to achieve the requirements needed to claim title to their land. Additionally, a system of proper checks and regulations were missing from the original bill, allowing for unscrupulous entrepreneurs to abuse the homestead process—occasionally by carving out a homestead that contained a vital resource, such as water, and then refusing to let neighboring homesteads partake of that resource.
The Homestead Act was revised and added to a number of times over the course of the next century, including the passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act in 1909 and the Stock-Raising Homestead Act in 1916. Homesteading as a federal practice ended in 1976 in all parts of the United States except for Alaska, which was permitted to continue granting homesteads for another decade. The final homestead granted in the United States of America was an 80-acre plot in southwestern Alaska, officially deeded in May of 1988. Since then, the federal government has deemed that the “needs of the American people” are best served with the remainder of public lands kept under federal control.
Now you know!
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