Homestead Act=Free Land!

Could you imagine getting 160 acres of “free” land by an act called The Homestead Act? It was an act passed by Congress in 1862 that would allow people to move to the midwest and get up to 160 acres of “free” land. Most people thought that living in the midwest was easy. They would usually leave their original homes in search of a new way to make money. People would leave their old home for a multitude of reasons like they lost their job or they went out of business.

If you wanted to be a homesteader then you had to be the head of a household or at least 21 years of age. In order to get the land you would only need to pay an $18 service fee. However, the land wouldn’t be YOURS until you made some sort of improvement to the land and then lived there for 5 years. Then the government would Give you the land. Making an improvement to the land and then living there wasn’t easy though.

Three out of five people would abandon their land states “history.com” . They were not given help at all, you would have to build a house and farm crops all by yourself or if you brought other people with you. Even then you would have so much land to the point where so many people felt as if they were trapped in their own land. There were barely any trees and you would have to till the land by yourself. You would also have to get water by yourself and harvest the crops by yourself (if you even got that far). This is why many people would leave their land according to archives.gov. .

An example of how the homestead act was a success was that groups of people would set up in one place and then built towns out of practically nothing. They created new states and by 1934, 1.6 million people had applied for land. By that time the Homestead act had been a huge success and 10% of all U.S land was owned by Homesteaders.

This is why The Homestead Act became a huge success. Although it was not easy living in the west people were able to build towns, grow crops, and make overall improvements. Groups of people would build wells and share crops, they worked as a team in order to become successful. Once the act was over the government was able to make new states out of the land that people had bought. Now a single acre costs up to 2000$. That was the whole goal, to get people to move out to the midwest and make entire towns.