Homesteading

Timber Culture Act, 1873

In 1873, the United States Congress enacted the Timber Culture Act. Like the Homestead Act of 1862, the Timber Culture Act granted a claimant 160 acres of public land for no cost in exchange for making improvements to the land. The Timber Culture Act originally said that if a person planted and nurtured the growth of trees on forty of their 160 acres for ten years, they could claim the land. The act was amended in 1874 to restrict claimants to being over the age of twenty-one (or the head of a household) and a citizen, or soon to be citizen, of the United States. The amendment also established a schedule for how much of the land needed to be planted in each year of the claim. In 1878, the Timber Culture Act was amended again. This time, the amount of land that had to be covered in trees was reduced from forty acres to ten. The amendment relaxed the schedule established in the 1874 amendments and also made exceptions for trees that had been destroyed by harsh climate or grasshopper plagues.

The federal Timber Culture Act of 1873 was designed to help settle prairie regions, many of which were just being reached by rail service. The law gave 160 acres to a landowner who planted and tended 40 acres of trees for 10 years, stimulating both settlement and the planting of trees in prairie areas. The landowner did not have to live on the land. The Timber Culture Act also reduced the Homestead Act residency requirement from five years to three years if the homesteader planted and tended an acre of trees for two of those three years. Few lands were claimed under the Timber Culture law at first, and in 1878 the law was changed to require only 10 acres of trees planted and tended for 8 years. Between 1873 and 1880, about 1.166 million acres of Minnesota land were dispersed in about 8,500 filings under the law (Jarchow 1949: 70). The Act was repealed in 1891

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wikipedia:Homestead Acts

• Also See:The Homestead Act of 1862

Signed into law by Abraham Lincoln.

In Minnesota from 1862-1880, more than 62,379 homestead entries involving 7.3 million acres – almost one-seventh of the state’s land area – were filed (Jarchow 1949: 65-66). During the 1860s-1880s, more than 200,000 acres in Minnesota were transferred to settlers each year (Blegen 1975: 253, 344). Minnesota total homestead entries averaged 335,226 acres per year from 1890-1900. A total of about 147 million acres were disbursed nationwide under the Act.

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Soldiers’ Homesteads (within Homestead Act of 1862). The Homestead Act of 1862 also provided Soldiers’ Homesteads, or soldiers’ claims, for veterans of the Civil War. Initially, only Union soldiers qualified, but in 1866 Congress included Confederate veterans. Any veteran who had served at least 90 days (or his widow or minor children) could claim the 160 acres of free land and deduct his time of service (up to four years) from the residency requirement of the Homestead Act.

In Minnesota, approximately 10 million acres, or about 20 percent of the state’s total land, was granted to railroad companies (Blegen 1975: 344). The railroad grants included land 10, 20, and sometimes 40 miles on either side of a proposed rail line. Nationwide, 131 million acres were granted to railroads. Public opposition helped end the practice in 1871. Much of the railroad land was sold to farmers and speculators who bought it at an average price of $4 an acre. The railroads sold their land at a premium in part because they didn’t want “poor” farmers locating along their lines, according to John T. Schlebecker. He explained, “A farmer who

had so little capital that he could not buy a farm usually could not succeed with a free farm, for homesteaders led the parade of bankrupt farmers. The railroads had no interest in creating zones of poverty along their rights-of-way or in not disposing of their land. They wanted customers with money.” For many farmers who bought railroad land, the advantage of being near the railroad more than compensated for the higher price of the land