Homesteading Meant Free Land to Eager Alaskan Settlers

What did it cost indigenous people?

I am the daughter of homesteaders.

No, not the back-to-the-land type who reads Mother Earth News and lives off the grid, though I have. The kind of homesteaders who received a patent or title for 160 acres of Alaskan land.

Since I’m writing a memoir, including my childhood spent on that homestead, I thought I should learn more about the Homestead Act of 1862 and its eventual expansion to Alaska. In the 1950s when I grew up in the Eagle River valley, homesteading was common. In fact, anyone who owned land in south-central Alaska back then probably got it by homesteading.

I doubt anyone wondered, “Whose land was the U.S. Government to giving away?”

Many of us are reconsidering history and attempting to understand the truth of the people whose land was often taken without payment or permission.

I’d never heard of The Dawes Severalty Act purported to turn native people into farmers and give the rest of their land to white people and now I have a very brief understanding.

Reading about the land that was taken from Native people in the continental United States made me want to understand more about the history of land ownership in Alaska. Was my family’s land taken from indigenous people?

It’s a complicated story — like so much of history.

The transfer of land in Alaska could be the subject of an entire book. When Russia sold the entire territory to the United States for only $7.2 million in 1867, there were about 35,000 residents, nearly all Native Alaskans whose ancestors had lived there for thousands of years.

From that time until the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, the title to Alaskan land was confusing at best. Most of the state had never been surveyed, yet in 1884, Congress opened the area for mining claims.

As early as 1884, Congress acknowledged that Alaska’s Native peoples had the right to the land. However, it was not until October 18, 1966, the 99th anniversary of the purchase of Alaska from Russia, that Emil Notti, engineer, and indigenous activist, initiated the historic statewide meeting of Native leaders that would eventually lead to ANCSA.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon signed ANSCA into law. At that time, barely one million of Alaska’s 424.5 million acres was privately owned. The law gave the newly formed Native corporations three years to determine the boundaries of approximately 40 million additional acres.

Even now, the federal government remains the largest landholder in Alaska, owning nearly 222 million acres and the state owns about 100 million.

The Homestead Act of 1862

In the mid-1800s, the U.S. government was eager to attract settlers to the undeveloped mid-west and western states. Someone had the idea that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the country could file a claim for a small fee. A person had to farm the land, build a house, and live on it for five years. President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act and it went into effect, January 1, 1862.

Between 1862 and 1904, the General Land office dispersed 500 million acres. Only 80 million acres of that land went to small farmers, with much more fraudulently ending up owned by land speculators, railroads, large cattlemen, and miners.

In the 1900s, the Enlarged Homestead Act and the Stock Raising Homestead Act allowed claims of up to 640 acres. All over the western United States, families still own land granted under these homestead laws. Some estimates put the number of descendants of homesteaders at 93 million people, including myself.

Homesteading in the Alaska Territory began in 1898

Even with the lure of free land, homesteading in the remote territory of Alaska was difficult because of harsh weather, brief seasons, and poor soils. Farming in Alaska was harder than expected and most of the land is not suited for agriculture.

People who served honorably in the Armed Services could apply a portion of their service time to substitute for the homesteading time requirement for living on their land and were also allowed to cultivate fewer acres. By the fifties, the residency requirement had been reduced from five years to seven consecutive months.

On our homestead on the south-facing slopes of the Eagle River valley, my father planted 20 acres of barley. He met the requirement of the Homestead Act which was to clear land and plant. We never harvested a crop and 50 years later, the forest again covers the land.

By 1914 less than 200 homestead applications had been filed in Alaska. Most immigrants to Alaska came for mining or fishing. A surge did come however in Alaska homestead applications after WWII and the Vietnam War.

Those 20th-century pioneers were looking for the same land ownership opportunity that had lured settlers out to the western states 100 years before. They also encountered many of the same hardships as their homesteading brethren of the 19th century such as lack of transportation, harsh weather, and even the danger of local wildlife.

The Homestead Act was repealed in 1976 but was extended until 1986 in Alaska.

So all this to say, the amount of land transferred in Alaska under the auspices of the Homestead Act was relatively small. Only 3,277 homesteaders received title to about 360,000 acres or less than one-tenth of one percent of the state. Even now, less than 1% of the land in the entire state is privately owned.

In a strange twist of history, a lot of these homesteads have ended up in pockets of state and federally owned national parks and forests. Our original homestead is now surrounded by Chugach State Park and overlooks Eagle River Nature Center.

April 1958 My mother said, “Just think homesteading is free except for road, clearing, etc.”

My parents arrived in Alaska in 1957, settling in Eagle River. They badly wanted land and like so many things in life, homesteading didn’t seem it would be that hard.

photo by M.C. Lloyd- My Dad, my brother, sister & me. Planting seeds 1958

In my mother’s journal she created a basic list:

(1) Must live on land within six months — sometimes can get one year extension of time.

(2) Must live on it seven months of one year and have no other home during that period!!!

(3) Must cultivate 1/16th of land year — second year — so on and on. Bill gets service time and so on only would clear 20 acres and he says there’s already 20 acres of naturally cleared land.

(4) All red tape and when habitable house built, land cleared etc then gets title to land.

Our first step would be:

(1) Buy Jeep

(2) Build a road

(3) Build a cabin

(4) Move-in

(5) Cultivate land.

If this would be done the first year, then we could get title and move off.

A year later, she wrote:

Homesteading at its best is difficult — homesteading in Alaska is really difficult — and for us — well, homesteading on the side of a mountain in Alaska proves more difficult still!

Not as easy as it seemed.

In reality, my parents got title to part of the land in 1963 and the rest of the 160 acres a couple of years later.

The Dream House that my mother craved, was never built. Eventually, my parents divorced and they sold all the land. After the cost of subdividing, the profit was never enough to have made sense for their life’s work. The land is still there and just as beautiful as it ever was. In myself and my five siblings, the homesteading experience instilled resiliency and a love of nature that I would not exchange.

When Alaskan Natives finally gained acknowledgment to their ancestral Alaskan lands, I can only imagine the celebration that followed. I know the attachment my family had to the land we lived on in Alaska and it was only ours for a very short time.

If you are fortunate to visit Alaska, please visit the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage and learn more about the original inhabitants of this amazing state.