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Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 401 and a homestead claim, gave each of them 480 acres. That many could not have taken the obligations of the law very seriously seems evident, and one may well wonder how a pioneer attempting to establish a farm on the bleak prairie could afford to divide his time between two or even three quarter-sections though they might be adjacent. Building a sod hut, digging a well, preparing land for the first crop, providing a fuel supply for the long winter, caring for any livestock the farm maker had, exchanging labor with others engaged in the same tasks, and trying to raise a few dollars to pay filing fees and buy essential items surely left little time to set out trees and carry water to them. Desert Land Act By 1877 Congress was convinced that further relaxation of the land system was advisable to adapt it to the use of people trying to create homesteads in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West. Where it was possible to divert streams or to build small reservoirs the lower lying arid lands might be made productive through irrigation. Any such activity would require either group action and the ability to raise considerable capital or, for smaller projects financed by individuals, control of larger units of land than the entry laws then permitted. A number of proposals were considered in Congress. Extensive land grants to companies, similar to the railroad land grants, which were then in bad odor, won little support. Most support was given a plan that was first tried as an experiment in Lassen County, California. In 1875 Congress authorized individuals in Lassen County-an extremely dry region east of the Sierras-to file plans for irrigating up to 640 acres of nontimbered, nonmineral land not producing grass and to enter it on payment of 25 cents an acre. If they could offer proof within 2 years that they had reclaimed the land for irrigation they were to take title on payment of an additional $1 an acre.29 Two years later Congress voted to extend the same sale plan, somewhat modified, to California, Oregon, and Nevada and to the Territories of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, and Dakota. A 3-year period was authorized between the filing of the original declaration and the completion of the entry with proof of improvements. The law required that the tracts were to be in compact form.30 Like the Timber Culture Act, this Desert Land Act, as it was called, was abused from the outset by cattlemen and other groups anxious to gain ownership of water rights. The act is not to be compared with the Homestead Act in the number of entries. Even so, 159,704 entries for 32,803,914 acres of desert land, and 46,999 final entries for 8,645,479 acres indicate that many tried but few succeeded in fulfilling the requirements of the Desert Land Act.31 Postwar Farm Making Despite the destruction caused by the Civil War and the absorption of large elements of the population in that struggle for 4 years, the number of farms in the United States increased by 615,908 or 23 percent, in the sixties. Yet between January 1, 1863, when homestead applications were first accepted, and 1870, only 142,210 applications for homesteads were filed. In Illinois, where no homestead land remained and where land values were high, 59,463 new farms were created whereas the maximum number of homestead filings in any state or territory during the sixties was 25,753. 29 Act of March 3, 1875, 18 Stat. 497. 30 Act of March 3, 1877, 19 Stat. 377. 31 GLO Annual Report, 1932, p. 42. |