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The Great Plains

The Great Plains. Homestead Act. Offered 160 acres of land free to any citizen or intended citizen who was head of the house hold. From 1862 to 1900, up to 600,000 families took advantage of the governments offer. Exodusters.

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The Great Plains

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  1. The Great Plains

  2. Homestead Act • Offered 160 acres of land free to any citizen or intended citizen who was head of the house hold. • From 1862 to 1900, up to 600,000 families took advantage of the governments offer.

  3. Exodusters • African Americans who moved from the post-Reconstruction South to Kansas.

  4. The Closing of the Frontier • Explorers asked Congress to protect the wilderness from settlement. • Yellowstone National Park was created by the government in 1872.

  5. Settlers meet the Challenges of the Plains • The frontier settlers faced extreme hardships droughts, floods, fires, blizzards, locust plagues, and occasional raids by outlaws and Native Americans. • Soddy or sod homes were freestanding houses made by stacking blocks of prairie turf, warm in the winter and cool in summer.

  6. Self-sufficient Homesteaders • Homesteaders had to be almost superhumanly self-sufficient. • Women often worked beside the men in the fields plowing the land and planting and harvesting crop. • Skilled in doctoring from snakebites to crushed limbs.

  7. Morrill Act • Gave federal land to states to help finance agricultural colleges. • Hatch act established agricultural experiment stations to inform farmers of new developments.

  8. Bonanza Farms • Railroad companies and investors created bonanza farms, enormous single crop spreads of 15,000-50,000 acres. • By 1900 the average farmer had nearly 150 acres under cultivation. • Some farmers mortgaged their land to buy more property, and as farms grew bigger, so did farmers’ debts.

  9. Bonanza Farms • Railroads charged Western farmers a higher fee than they did farmers in the East. • The railroads claimed that they were only doing business, but farmers resented being taken advantage of.

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