Homesteading the plains : toward a new history / Richard Edwards, Jacob K. Friefeld, Rebecca S. Wingo.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

2018 Nebraska Book Award

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, selected by Choice



Homesteading the Plains offers a bold new look at the history of homesteading, overturning what for decades has been the orthodox scholarly view. The authors begin by noting the striking disparity between the public's perception of homesteading as a cherished part of our national narrative and most scholars' harshly negative and dismissive treatment.



Homesteading the Plains reexamines old data and draws from newly available digitized records to reassess the current interpretation's four principal tenets: homesteading was a minor factor in farm formation, with most Western farmers purchasing their land; most homesteaders failed to prove up their claims; the homesteading process was rife with corruption and fraud; and homesteading caused Indian land dispossession. Using data instead of anecdotes and focusing mainly on the nineteenth century, Homesteading the Plains demonstrates that the first three tenets are wrong and the fourth only partially true. In short, the public's perception of homesteading is perhaps more accurate than the one scholars have constructed.



Homesteading the Plains provides the basis for an understanding of homesteading that is startlingly different from current scholarly orthodoxy.

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Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Homesteading looms large in the folklore and memories of European settlement of the North American Great Plains, but has almost disappeared from professional research and writing, including mainstream US history textbooks. These three authors aim to revise the standardized views of homesteading, which consist of four main points: homesteading was a minor factor in farm formation, as most farmers purchased their land; most claimants failed to "prove up" their claims; there was much corruption and fraud; and homesteading caused Indian land dispossession. As a contrarian example, the authors conclude from statistical analysis that some two-thirds of new farms and one-third of new farmland in the West (defined for this work as west of the Missouri River and north of Texas) resulted from homestead claims. The book represents the first fruits of a massive digitization project. Two million individual land claims filed between 1862 and 1985 produced some 30 million pieces of paper. Nebraska claims are the first to be completely digitized. Stay tuned--there is much more to come. Every library with any interest in frontier/western/Great Plains history should have a copy of this book and, sometime in the future, access to the digital files. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Steven Dale Reschly, Truman State University