Images of Homestead National Monument – Southeastern Nebraska, taken in September 2017.

Homestead National Monument protects the first registered homestead claim of the United States. Filed by Daniel Freeman on January 1, 1863 the T-shaped 160 acre plot includes 100 acres of restored Tallgrass Prairie.

This park was special to me because my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family were homesteaders. They settled on a 160 acre parcel of land near the small town of Meadowlands in northern Minnesota, built a log cabin to live in until my Grandfather was able to complete construction of a much larger house and farmed the land for the required five years after which they received title to the land.

Homesteading was an opportunity for people, most of them immigrants, to share in the American dream to own land and live an independent life; but it was a tough life and unlike my grandparents, not all were able to “prove out” their claims. Those that did were granted the deeds to their land.

For 123 years, from 1863 through 1976, the Homestead Act provided a parcel of acreage to those willing to test their survival skills and rewarded the successful with free land.