the General Land Office. The Act was superimposed on the preemption laws, price graduation, war bounties, and numerous other land laws enacted earlier. The workload doubled, then tripled, and finally zoomed beyond the wildest expectations of the Commissioners. The General Land Office did grow, but belatedly with the increased business.
The number of land offices increased substantially between 1862 and 1900. For instance, the proposed budget for the Commissioners' Office in Washington in 1870 was $178,000. He had 136 employees. There were 77 District Land Offices spread across the Nation. 119/ In 1900 the budget was in excess of $500,000, there were 451 employees, and 120 District Land Offices. 120 During this period the phrase "doing a land office business" had specific meaning.
The following table best indicates the yearly increase in the duties of the General Land Office, resulting from the Homestead Act:
The statistics, of course, tell only a small part of the story. For there were endless claims, cases of fraudulent entires, conflicting claims, and numerous other aspects of the administration of the Homestead Act that required enormous effort on the part of the General Land Office. The following case is an example of the thousands reviewed in the land offices spread across the Nation:
The husband in the case left his home and family
in another State; joined another woman in Nebraska,
returning occasionally to his former home and
maintaining the usual relations with his family.
He made a homestead entry upon which he estab-
lished residence with the woman not his wife, it
being given out that they were husband and wife,
and, in fact, some kind of marriage ceremony was
performed. After a time, the true situation came
to the knowledge of his lawful wife, whereupon she
took up her residence with another man near the
homestead of her husband; the two pseudo families
living in harmony and on visiting terms. The
wife went to the State of Colorado and secured a
judgment of divorce entitling her to a decree,
within six months, of the annulment of her
marriage; before the expiration of that period
she and the man with whom she had been residing,
had a marriage ceremony performed. She then
visited the homestead of the husband and exhibited
to him and his so-called wife the decision of the
court in her divorce proceeding, together with a
certificate of her remarriage, whereupon, and
after the expiration of the six-month period
within which final decree of divorce might have
been secured by the wife, the homesteader and
his companion had an apparently legal and formal
marriage ceremony solemnized.
The entryman suddenly died soon afterward and the
woman to whom he had recently been married applied
to the probate court for the appointment of an
administrator of the estate of the deceased home-
steader and for the allotment to her, as a widow,
of the statutory allowance. In this proceeding
she was opposed by wife No. 1, and by the heirs
of the deceased. Decision was rendered in favor
of the petitioner, but later reversed by the
district court from which appeal was taken to
the supreme court of Nebraska, and the same was
pending when the case came before the General
Land Office.
Wife No. 1 also applied to make final proof on
the homestead entry, alleging that, inasmuch
as no final decree had been made in her divorce
proceeding, she was the lawful widow of the
deceased and, therefore, his legal successor
under the provisions of the homestead law. 122
Life was not by anyone's standard cosmopolitan in those land offices deluged by anxious homesteaders. A classic description of a land office was given by an inspector visiting Minot, North Dakota. He wrote the Commissioner the following description:
Outside of register and receiver's desk,
Densmore typewriter and safe, the outfit
looks very much as though it may have come
over in the Mayflower. One blank case stands
upon two soap boxes, and the boxes are not
plumb with each other. The stove in one room
is minus two legs, and bricks are substituted.
I am unable to diagnose the complaint of the
stove pipe; however, I know its's something
serious. The feather duster has three quills
left, and to make a very long story short,
it's a royal outfit, and as I passed from
one department to the other I concluded it
looked more like a side hill second hand
store than it does a United States Land
Office. In the room next to the vault
where two of the clerks are quartered, I
found an old gasoline stove with cooking
outfit, and a flock of geese, ducks, wood-
chucks, coyotes, etc., which had been pre-
pared some years ago by a taxidermist. In
the smaller of these rooms I found what
looked like the upheavel of an old graveyard,
as upon an old table and in among the debris
and rubbish were skull bones, mummies and
hobgoblins. Not being versed in the art, I
am unable to explain their value. Take these
decorations and have them covered with a
thick dust that has been permitted to lay
undisturbed ever since the land office has
been located here, and it is no wonder that
one of the clerks, is languishing in the
pest house with a dose of small-pox, for
there is no telling what fermentation is
going on in such places. The agitation
must be great. I know it is with me, but
I concluded to take it and take my chances.
It is admitted by the entire office force
that these conditions have existed during
the life of this office, and when I called
attention to these points, they wonder, if
this was not pleasing, that former inspectors
did not complain. I do not heed such argu-
ments but have a pledge that the entire room
shall be removed from the premises. I
fumigate myself after each visit to the
office, and it is very unpleasant to be
personal, but I can avoid it by asking the
Hon. Commissioner if he has ever experienced
a receiver who never looks where he is going
to sit down, who shaves once in seven weeks
and has whiskers that flourish upon the high
spots only, who indulges in the use of a cob
pipe during most of the office hours, who
walks at least twice around the stove when
he starts for the safe to deposit fourteen
dollars taken for a homestead entry, and a
register who stoops in crossing the street
to get under the electric light wires, who
combs his hair with a whisk broom, who
cleans his necktie with a piece of sand
paper, and when he changes his shirt and
other linen he simply puts on that which
he took off ten days previous without being
laundered. You may never have seen men
thus described, but I will say I have. 123/
As business and the number of homesteaders increased it became obvious that the Homestead law had certain limitations. People began asking for legislative amendments to take care of particular situations. As a result, various revisions were eventually made to the Homestead Act.
The Kinkaid Act, which applied only to Nebraska, enlarged the amount of land that could be homesteaded in the western portion of
Under the provisions of the Act, a 640-acre homestead could be established. 124/ Later, in 1909, through the Enlarged Homestead Act the Kinkaid concept was applied to nine Western States. The Enlarged Homestead legislation allowed a 320- rather than a 640-acre entry. 125/
Special conditions were enacted into law for Forest Homesteads in 1906. The law provided for a 160-acre farm in forest areas where the land was chiefly valuable for agriculture (e.g. valley areas in forest regions).126
In 1912 the Three-Year Homestead Act was passed. 127/ In this Act, Congress recognized the difficulty of earning a living during the long five year residency required by the 1862 law. The Three Year Act demanded only seven months residence each year for three years.
The Stock Raising Homestead Act was passed in 1916. It allowed a 640-acre entry for "stock raising" purposes. The Commissioner of the General Land Office, Clay Tallman, called it "probably the most important and far reaching land legislation that had been enacted for many years." 128
It was during this period of legislative revisions to the original Act that the greatest number of Homestead entries were made. The Kinkaid, the Enlarged Homestead Act, and the Stock Raising Homestead Act were an outgrowth of the land reservation controversy that took place in the early years of the 20th Century.
The virtual abandonment of the Homestead theory took place when the Taylor Grazing Act was passed in 1934. After that date, the re were few Homestead entries, because most of the good land had been taken and under the classification provisions of the Taylor Act and the Executive Orders, a great deal of land was set aside specifically for grazing purposes.
This phase will be dealt with later in the part on conservation.
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