Characteristics of the West: The Farming Frontier Topic 6.2 (Contextualization) (jan 1, 1862 – 8h 20min, jun 6, 2026 y)

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Farming:
The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged farming by offering 160 acres of land to any family who promised to improve the land within 5 years. This combined with the construction of the railroad caused hundreds of thousands of native or immigrant families to farm in the Great Plains until the 1890s. The best land often went to the railroads or land speculators and everyone else dealt with the bad land.
Many families who lived on dry land suffered from droughts, grasshoppers, and hot and cold weather. These people were known as Sodbusters typically built their homes out of sod bricks. The invention of the barbed wire by Joseph Glidden in 1874 helped them to fence off their land.
160 acres of land was hard for one family or person to take care of especially with the prices of crops lowering and the expense of machinery increasing. Two-thirds of homesteaders failed by 1900. There were some successes in the west as some farmers adopted dry farming. Although, the government ended up building dams and irrigation systems which saved many western farmers.

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