Settling the Great Plains
In the early 1800s, few people lived on the Great Plains. The
Great Plains are in the middle of the United States. People
did not think the land was good for farming. It was very dry
and flat.
In 1862, the Homestead Act was passed. The government
helped people to settle on the Great Plains. The government
sold adults 160 acres of land for a small amount of money.
If they could farm the land for five years, they could own it.
A settler’s home and land was called a homestead. Many
homesteaders came from the eastern United States, where
farmland cost a lot. In the Great Plains, land was cheaper.
Settlers also came from Europe, where there was not much
land to buy. There was a lot of land to buy in the Great Plains.
African Americans also wanted to start farms. Many African
Americans were poor. They faced prejudice and violence after
the Civil War. They started their own towns in Kansas. African
American settlers were called Exodusters, after a book in the
Bible that tells the story of how people escaped slavery.
Settlers Face Hardships
Settlers had to learn how to farm on the Great Plains. The
soil was held together by grass roots. It was called sod.
Settlers were called sodbusters because they had to break
through the sod to plant crops. There was not a lot of wood,
so settlers used sod to build homes. Winters were long and
cold. Summers were hot and dry. There were many droughts.
There were grass fires because it was so dry. Farmers had to
grow crops that did not need much water. They carried water
from streams. Some farmers used windmills to pump water
from underground. In the 1870s, millions of grasshoppers ate
the crops. There weren’t many people in the area to do farm
work, so farmers used new and better farm machines. New
machines made it faster and easier to grow more crops.
