1 janv. 1862 - Homestead Act

Description:

The 1862 act that gave 160 acres of free western land to any applicant who occupied and improved the property. (Republicans hopes it would build up the interior West, which was inhabited by Indian peoples but remained “empty” on U.S. government survey maps.) This policy led to the rapid development of the American West after the Civil War; facing arid conditions in the West, however, many homesteaders found themselves unable to live on their land.


-After the Civil War, Congress also funded a series of geological surveys, dispatching U.S. Army officers, scientists, and photographers to chart unknown western terrain and catalog natural resources.

To a large extent, these policies (this, Morrill act, department of agriculture) succeeded in incorporating lands west of the Mississippi. The United States began to exploit its western empire for minerals, lumber, and other raw materials. But for ordinary Americans who went west, dreams often outran reality. Well-financed corporations, not individual prospectors, reaped most of the profits from western mines, while the Great Plains environment proved resistant to ranching and farming.

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