The Homestead Act is a piece of U.S. legislation which gave 160 acres (0.65 km&sup2) i.e. one quarter of a section of a township of undeveloped land in the western United States to any family head provided he lived on it for five years, or allowed the family head to buy it for $1.25 per acre ($308/km&sup2) after six months. The act was signed into law by President Lincoln on May 20, 1862. The first claim under the Homestead Act was made for a farm in Nebraska on January 1, 1863. By the end of the 19th century, very little useful agricultural land remained open to settlement, but over 570 million acres (2,300,000 km²) remained open to settlement.

In 1906, the Forest Homestead Act was passed.

The Homestead Act of 1912 reduced the homestead requirement from five to three years.

As the Frontier moved west onto the arid Great Plains the amount of land a homesteader was allowed to claim was changed to 640 acres (2.6 km&sup2), a full section. Although a few isolated pockets remained into the 1950s most land in the lower 48 states had been taken up by 1910 or so. Homesteading continued on a small scale in Alaska. Much of the remaining public domain was included in the National Forests or is administered by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading; the government believing that the best use of public lands was for them to remain in government control. The only exception to this new policy was Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986.

In Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado homesteading cut into the access of the large ranches to the public domain where hundreds of thousands of cattle were grazed upon the open range, a practice called free grazing. The ranchers fought back by themselves (or their cowboys) homesteading prime spots which gave access to water. At times tensions escalated into violence, conflicts called range wars, for example, the Johnson County War in Wyoming.

The act was later copied with some modifications by Canada in the form of the Dominion Lands Act, and similar acts, usually termed the Selection Acts were passed in the various Australian colonies in the 1860s, beginning in 1861 in New South Wales.

Ironically, the Homestead Act was often used as a scam. Usually, the land that was availible was in really bad shape for any type of farming, especially in the middle of the plains where droughts were a common occurance. Because of hardships like these, not that many families actually stayed for the entire 5 years.

Many corporations also took advantage of this act. They would pay people to buy the top-of-the-line property that contain an abundance of resources like timber, minerals and oil. Then the settlers would claim later on that they had "improved" the land. In reality, the improvements made to the land were very small.

See also

• Public Land Survey System