Does anyone live on or own one of The Old Real Homestead Government Lands ?

[bumpus]

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What was the Homestead Act ?

Do you now own or live on one of those Old Homesteads,
and where and how long have you lived their ?

Did someone in your family buy the land
during the land give away ( or land rush ) ?




Click here to read what it really was all about.
Good site:


http://www.nps.gov/home/homestead_act.html

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[Billie in MO]

Yes, my husband's grandparents did here in W. CO back in the early 1960's. As mentioned in the article in later years the amount of land in the west was less. His grandparents had 5 acres that they homesteaded and if I remember correctly it only cost about $5. Just paperwork fees, I'm sure. And yes, that 5 acres is still in the family, but is rented out. Lot of hard feelings about the property and what will happened to it when my mother-in-law is gone. I stay out of the feuding, tho. However, the property is not good for anything except to have a house on. It's on the side of a steep hill, is rocky with a canyon on one side and on the other side a road runs thru part of the property which splits it. That road will take you the back way in to the Colorado National Monument. But the view from the property is just gorgeous. You can see the entire grand valley, the Bookcliffs and the Grand Mesa.

[OD]

Yes, we have 40 acres of the land that my g-g-grandfather homesteaded in 1854. It has stayed in the family, but we had to buy it from distant cousins. The old log house that he built burned a few years ago. It was just across the property line beside a big spring.

[Freeholder]

My grandmother last year just sold the last few acres of the land her grandparents homesteaded on the Oregon Coast in the 1870's. And, my parents had a 160-acre homestead in Alaska under the old Homesteading Act -- that was where I grew up. But they sold it when they divorced.

Kathleen in Oregon

[Alex]

We live in our original homestead log house that we built thirty-two years ago in Canada, on homestead land.

We moved our log house to an adjacent Quarter Section. The original Quarter, I "proved-up" in 1972 and thru a convoluted arrangement with a Canadain Citizen, I bought the land from him after he had my "prove-up" job inspected by the government.

I couldn't buy the land directly from the government at the time, because I was only a USA citizen then.

We had to build a house (our log house), and I got thirty-four more acres into cultivation before the seller could sell it to me for the purchase-from-the-government-price of $8 per acre ($1,280), plus an additional $1,720 to the seller, plus I had to do all the work (me and Nancy and the kids).



"Spike" 1939 Jonh Deere 'D' Diesel, and manual breaking plow and me, a rough-ride, indeed.

Alex

[Windy in Kansas]

I own the 160 acre homestead that my maternal grandfather homesteaded in 1887.

My sister-in-law owns the 160 acre homestead that my paternal grandfather homesteaded in 1886. It is the place where my brothers and I were raised--many fond memories.

My oldest brother sold another 160 acre family homestead in 1997, that which my father purchased after his uncle died. It was also homesteaded in 1886.

The majority of homesteads in this particular area were homesteaded in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Two of our family owned quarter sections would have qualified for the "Century Farm" status if we had applied for it.