Homestead Movement

The law the panel celebrates outlived the frontier by a century. By 1988 it had been repealed for twelve years in the lower 48 states and two in Alaska. The last person to take title to a homestead was Kenneth Deardorff, a Californian and wounded Vietnam veteran who went north in 1974 and claimed 80 acres on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. He met the act's requirements in 1979, kept a small store for river travelers and trapped furs, and received his patent in May 1988. Research in 2001 confirmed he was the last.

What the plaque says

Homestead Movement Abraham Lincoln was called The Great Emancipator because his proclamation of 1862 gave freedom to the slaves. In that same year, he signed another extremely important document that gave land to free men. No single act had more effect on the Middle West and Great Plains than the Homestead Act of May 20, 1862. It brought tens of thousands of land-hungry settlers to the region that was to become the nation's breadbasket. Millions of acres from the public domain became available. Under this law heads of families had only to pay a small filing fee and live upon and cultivate their 160 acres for five years. For some the rigors of frontier life were too great, but many others replaced the prairie grasses with grain, and built homes, often of sod, on land of their own. The Homestead National Monument of America, a part of our National Park System, is located on the Daniel Freeman homestead seven miles west of this site. It commemorates this act and the policies of government that played a major role in the settlement of the West. Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Homestead National Historical Park — 4.2 mi
  Daniel Freeman's claim on Cub Creek near Beatrice, one of the first filed under the Homestead Act, with a one-room school, a homesteader's cabin, restored prairie and the land's earlier owners.
• Rock Creek Station State Historical Park — 21 mi
  A stage and Pony Express station on the trail southeast of Fairbury where James Hickok killed David McCanles in July 1861, with the court papers that cleared him, and deep wagon ruts.

More markers nearby

• Plymouth — 13 mi
• Swan City — 13 mi
• 1880 Diller 1980 — 16 mi
• Czech Capital — 17 mi