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With its promise of free land, the Homestead Act of 1862 opened the doors for "any person who is the head of a family or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration intention to become such" could obtain 160 acres (one quarter section) of land free of charge for cultivating a portion of it for five years and paying a small filing fee. According to the Ethnic Heritage in North Dakota, "In crowded European countries where the "seventh son of a seventh son" had no chance of land and little opportunity to make a living, 160 acres seemed like a kingdom." In addition to immigrants from foreign lands, immigrants arrived from the eastern United States looking for the freedom and adventure the new lands in the "west" offered. More homesteads were granted in North Dakota then in any other state except Montana. From 1868 through 1889, 12,809 homesteads were granted in the Dakota Territory that comprised both North and South Dakota. Between 1890 when North Dakota became a state, and 1920, Bureau of Land Management records show that 44,603 homesteads were granted in North Dakota.
Foreign immigrants were considered ideal colonists who worked hard and stayed on the land. Frugality and industriousness combined with some agricultural training and a willingness to endure hardship made for excellent pioneers. While immigrants who settled in the Red River Valley could continue to build log cabins and woof-frame dwellings, those who settled farther from a railroad or wooded area adapted to the availability of local building materials and built simple structures made of sod or a straw and clay brick. North Dakota and the northern prairie states are physically distinctive. Trees are few and grass is short. Temperatures fluctuate from oppressive heat in some to frigid, arctic cold in winter. For the most part, it is flat and featureless and in serious need of rain. Immigrants had to modify their living habits and adjust to the demands of the new physical setting. Those who would not or could not were forced to leave. In many townships, more than half of the homesteaders had departed by the end of the first two decades of settlement. Those who remained adapted and settled and raised the children and grandchildren that populate the region's rural and small town populace, and to a large extent, the city dwellers as well. |
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