Critical Thinking 13-2!

How successful were the governments efforts to promote settlement of the great plains?

The governments efforts in promoting the settlement of the great plains were very successful ones. These efforts included giving land grants to railroad companies and creating the tempting Homestead Act that offered free land. These two ideas to promote the land were successful in creating a fast growing population in the west.

One part of the governments plan to promote settlement in the west was to try and lead the settlers westward by giving land grants to the railroads.(p. 420-421) This meant that from 1850 to 1871 the government gave 170 acres of land to the railroads for laying down tracks. The railroad companies would get a certain amount of land for the amount and place that they laid down tracks, like for example a company would receive 10 square miles of public land for every mile of track laid down in a state in the west. This lead to lots of settlement because the railroad companies would take the public land that they received and sell it to farmers. The farmers would want to come and settle the land and use the railroads stationed there and in turn the railroads would get a lot of business out of the settled farmers that they sold there land to. Also it created a lot of settlement from immigration because the work of putting down the track created many jobs that many Irish and Chinese immigrants came over to the great plains to do.

The government saw that a powerful attraction of the west was the land that it offered. This realization lead to the congress passing the Homestead Act in 1862(p. 421). This Act offered 160 acres of free land to citizens that were the heads of there household. This lead to up to 600,00 families taking advantage of the option from 1862 to 1900 even though the land was not always used fairly, given out properly or even land that was good for farming. The problems with the land thought eventually lead to the government making changes in the act to give settlers even more land. Then the government increased this act even more to cause even more encouragement for the settlers. The government decided to give away the much convented land of Oklahoma. This land was wanted by so many settlers that people even got head starts in settling the state.

The government used its offering of land to the railroads and its offering of free land in the Homestead Act to help propel the settlement of the Great Plains and greatly increase its population.