Homesteading in the Badlands: Free Land, Hard Ground and a Railroad

About 40 percent of homesteaders "proved up" on their claims, meaning they met the requirements to own the land. A Badlands National Park article tells the story of the others and of the people who stayed, and why the Badlands, with soils too poor for most crops, drew homesteaders at all.

Photo: National Park Service. Homesteaders in the Badlands, as the house looked in 1911.

What homesteading was

The Homestead Acts were US laws that promoted expansion into the American West by giving land away. Under the first one, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, a citizen could claim a 160-acre plot of public land by filing an application, living on and improving the land for at least five years, and filing for a deed within seven years. The risks were real: nobody knew whether the soil would be fertile or the rain plentiful, some plots were cut off from rivers and hard to irrigate, and the life was solitary on remote Great Plains land. The article also says the "free" land came at great cost to Native Americans: much of it was taken from the people who had lived on the Great Plains, through legislation such as the Dawes Act, which pushed off their land those who did not comply with government divisions of it.

Photo: National Park Service. A family in front of their home in Wall, South Dakota, in 1908.

Who could claim land

A claimant had to be a US citizen at least 21 years old, single or the head of a household, and never have taken up arms against the US. Men and women could both claim land. There were no racial requirements, so after the 1866 Civil Rights Act gave African Americans citizenship they could claim land too. Most buildings of Black homesteaders have disappeared, but there were several Black homesteading communities in the mid to late 1800s, among them the Sully County Colored Colony in South Dakota, about 160 miles from the Badlands. People from Germany, Norway, Sweden, Poland and many other countries also homesteaded South Dakota.

Daily life

Many homesteaders lived in sod houses, with bricks packed from the surrounding soil; the law required one of at least 12 by 14 feet, and families replaced it with a wood-frame house as soon as they could. Work depended on the land: fertile ground meant plowing and planting, while ground that could only support livestock meant ranching, spending days in the saddle moving cattle, fixing fence posts and distributing hay. Many kept a few cows, hogs, chickens or turkeys for food.

Photo: National Park Service. The journey to the Great Plains could be long and hard.

Why it mattered, and why the Badlands came late

The promise of free land and opportunity brought thousands of citizens to South Dakota, and the larger population led to statehood. Some who proved up sold at a profit, but many stayed and began generations of farming and ranching; many South Dakota ranchers today live on land their ancestors homesteaded.

Homesteading in the Badlands was slow because of the infertile soil. Two things changed that early in the 1900s: the Chicago and Northwestern Railway built the first train line through Interior, the town just south of the Badlands, in 1907, and the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 doubled the acreage offered. The 1912 residency change and the 1916 ranching act then brought many more.

Photo: National Park Service. Homesteading brought newcomers to the Badlands in great numbers.

Sources

• National Park Service, Badlands National Park, Homesteading in the Badlands, part of the series History & Culture in the Badlands; one photograph, and the name of the family in another, left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.