No less difficult, though less colorful and poetic, were the lives of the settlers. With the Homestead Act of 1862, a settler could claim as much as 160 acres (a quarter section) on the condition that he (occasionally she) lived on the land for five years, improved it, and paid a fee of $30. Alternatively, land could be bought after only six months’ residence at $1.25 per acre. Before the Homestead Act, government land was sold for revenue. After the Homestead Act, public land was literally given away to encourage settlement of the frontier with family farms, considered the mainstay of democracy. Western settlement would also create new markets for eastern manufactured goods.

By 1865, 20,000 pioneers had migrated west to stake a claim and carve a life from the wilderness. In the next 40 years, half a million more families became homesteaders. During that same time, however, over two million families purchased land from the railroads, land companies, or state governments. Homesteading was difficult since 160 acres on the dry plains were often not enough to support a family. The land was cheap, but livestock, equipment, and seed were expensive. It took a minimum of $1,000 to get started homesteading, which was a lot of money at the time.

The bane of the plains farmer was the weather. Temperature and moisture varied tremendously from year to year, and wind and hail could wipe out crops in an instant. Prairie fires and swarms of locusts added to the farmer’s burden. Unlike eastern farmers, the farmers of the West might not get a crop every year, and they had to be prepared to hang on and live a subsistence sort of life in the lean years. These brutal facts discouraged all but the hardiest pioneers.

Transportation to haul produce to market was expensive, and interest rates on loans and mortgages were high. Special plows and new machinery such as threshers and hay mowers all allowed a farmer to produce more, but the expense of the devices often put him into debt. As more grain was produced, prices fell, adding to the woes of the farmer. More than half the homesteaders who had headed west with such high hopes were forced to give up.

Much of the prairie was not suitable for farming at all, but was much better grazing land. The Homestead Act parceled out land in small lots, while cattle ranchers needed large tracts to run a successful operation. The Homestead Act forced ranchers to acquire land piecemeal as homesteaders gave up and sold out or as railroads sold their land to raise money to extend their tracks.

Unscrupulous companies often acquired the best timber and mineral properties through fraudulent practices including using “dummy” homesteaders and fake improvements. Much of the public domain land passed quickly from the original homesteaders to promoters, not farmers. The Federal policy of virtually free homestead land lasted until 1934, though as time went on, the land available became increasingly marginal.

Railroads had made it possible to sell crops at great distances, and farmers began to think in terms of a single cash crop rather than general farming to produce their families’ needs. Railroads benefited from this trade and sent agents to Europe to promote western settlement. Mennonites and other groups who had farmed on the Russian steppes in a climate and topography similar to the American plains brought valuable knowledge and experience with them to America. They also brought the Red Turkey strain of winter wheat, which was ideally suited to the region.

As farmers became more knowledgeable about raising crops in the severe conditions of the plains, they abandoned water-hungry crops such as corn and beans in favor of drought-resistant grains such as sorghum and wheat. A new flour-milling process developed by John S. Pillsbury of Minneapolis increased demand for grain.

Originally called the high plains desert, the prairie supported tough, water-conserving native grasses whose root systems often reached ten feet into the earth. This dense sod resisted being broken up for planting crops until special steel plows were developed. Farmers who used these plows were called sodbusters. Contrary to expectation, the prairie proved remarkably fertile. With no trees on the prairie, sodbusters used the tough sod to build their homes, burned corncobs and buffalo chips (dried manure) for cooking and heating, and fenced their land with barbed wire to keep cattle and other grazing animals out of their fields. Wood was so scarce and expensive on some parts of the prairie that roughly hewn limestone was used as fence posts for stringing barbed wire. By 1883, Joseph Glidden’s company was making 600 miles of his patented wire each day.

Heedless of the increasingly dry climate west of the 100th meridian, which runs through North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, settlers began tilling western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and Montana. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, a drought drove all but the most stubborn out. Dry farming techniques such as using a “lifter” to cultivate rather than a plow to break up the soil seemed to improve matters. But cultivation of any sort ground the surface to powder with devastating results later in the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.

Because there were fewer women than men on the frontier, women were treated more equitably than in other areas of the country. In many places, the ratio of men to women was more than 100 to 1. The scarcity of women accorded them privileges of owning property and conducting their own businesses, which women in the East could not do. With the wave of homesteaders, women worked side-by-side with men on the family farm. On the frontier, the harsh demands of wresting a living from the land forced men to accept women as equal partners in the pioneer endeavor.

Women settlers became more independent and found confidence in themselves and their ability to survive in difficult situations. For these reasons, the women’s rights movement was especially strong in the West. Women still faced prejudice and legal barriers, however, and everywhere women were subject to varying restrictions in owning and selling property and in bringing suit against people or companies who wronged them. Even in the West, it was not until the twentieth century that women could serve on juries, vote, or hold public office.

Copyright 2006 The Regents of the University of California and Monterey Institute for Technology and Education