Lee and Karen Duquette,
The Two RV Gypsies: Full-Time RVers
visited The Homestead Heritage Park and Museum
and learned about the Homestead Act of 1862

The award winning Homestead Heritage Park opened in May 2007 to provide a place where the magnitude and world-wide impact of the Homestead Act of 1862 is being told.

The building was designed to represent the Homestead Act of 1862 with its spectacular views and unique roof line resembling a single bottom plow moving through the sod. The point of the roof points west. Even the parking lot is educational in nature. The park is one acre in size.

Along the sidewalk entrance to the building is the Living Wall of States; a physical representation of which states adopted the Homestead Act of 1862.

The Homestead Act of 1862 has been called one of the most important pieces of Legislation in the history of the United States. Signed into law in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln after the secession of southern states, this Act turned over vast amounts of the public domain to private citizens. 270 millions acres, or 10% of the area of the United States was claimed and settled under this act.

A homesteader had only to be the head of a household or at least 21 years of age to claim a 160 acre parcel of land. Each homesteader had to live on the land, build a home, make improvements and farm for 5 years before they were eligible to prove up.

The Homestead Act remained in effect until it was repealed in 1976, with provisions for homesteading in Alaska until 1986.

State-of-the-art exhibits present homesteading in an interactive setting. Such topics as the Act's influence on immigration, agriculture, industrialization, native tribes, the tall grass prairie ecosystem and Federal land policies are presented in an educational and thought-provoking manner. Below is just a small sampling of what the museum has to offer.

Below: Views of the tall grass prairie and the barbed wire fence behind the Homestead Heritage Center.

Below: Behind the Homestead Heritage is a cabin typical of what was built in those days, and how they lived.

Did You Know that Women WERE allowed to own the deed to 160 acres of land under the Homestead Act, 60 years before they earned the right to vote?

Lee Duquette drove just a bit down the street from the Homestead Heritage Center and came to the Homestead National Monument of America and Education Center. There were birds watching their near-by nest while sitting on the security cameras.

Printed on the wall outside the Homestead National Monument of America and Education Center there was a listing of celebrities whose relatives were homesteaders, but it was difficult to photograph that area because of the tall bushes that needed to be trimmed. There are an estimated 93,000,000 descendants of homesteaders in the world today. A building inside showed all types of old equipment.