13.3

1. Chapter 13.3
Farming the Plains

2. “Home Sweet Soddie”
Q: Could you live in a house made of dirt?
Sod homes: known as a “Soddie” built from sod, which is a strip or block of dense
grass with the roots and soil attached.
Tough roots of the prairie grasses made ideal sod. The sod could be cut and
stacked like bricks to make thick-walled homes.
- Stayed cool in the summer
- Warm in the winter

4. Incentives for settlement
Q: What incentives encouraged farmers to settle in the West?
Congress passed 3 acts in 1862 to turn public lands into private property.
#1 The Homestead Act:
- Each head of household over the age of 21 was allowed to claim 160 acres of
land
- Required to build a home on the land
- Improve the land
- Farm the land for 5 years before being granted full ownership

5. Incentives for Settlement continued …
Q: What incentives encouraged farmers to settle in the West?
#2 The Pacific Railway Act of 1862
- Gave land to railroad companies to encourage the construction of railroad and
telegraph lines.
- Federal gov’t provided 125 million acres and states added 100 million acres
more for railroad lines to be built
- Railroad companies sold some of this land to homesteaders to reap massive
profits.

7. Incentives for Settlement continued
Q Why was the Morrill Act significant?
#3 The Morrill Act
- Gave public land to the states to provide colleges for agriculture and the
mechanic arts.
- Many states did NOT build colleges
- Instead sold the land and used the money to fund education.
- This act was the FIRST time the federal gov’t provided assistance for higher
education.

8. Migrating West
Q: Which group(s) of people moved west, and why did they do so?
- In the 1870s African Americans began a massive migration west
- Benjamin “pap” Singleton inspired African Americans to build their own
communities in the west
- African Americans notoriously being oppressed by the south also left due to
increased violence
- 15,000 African Americans migrated to Kansas in 1877
- Became known as Exodusters as masses migrated to Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois.

10. Migrating West
Q: What happened when federal troops withdrew from the south in 1877?
- Segregation laws
- Public places
- Schools
- Factories
- Farms
- Bathrooms
- Lynching laws
- Violent attack groups
- Ku Klux Klan

11. New ways of farming
Q: How did settlers in the Southwest adapt their farming methods to the dry
conditions?
- Harsh climate
- Long, cold and bitter winters
- Hot summers that caused crops to shrivel and die
- Built windmill well pumps to water crops
- Used Native American irrigation techniques
- Strips of farming bordering a water source
- Combine harvester
- A machine that cut wheat, separated the grains from the stalks, and removed husks from the
grains all in one operation (Pricey machines that many farmers went into debt to buy)

13. Farming as big business
Q: Why were Bonanza farms more susceptible to boom and bust?
- Large companies saw profits to be made in farming on the plains
- Created Bonanza farms
- Operated like factories
- Used expensive machinery
- Large labor force; managers and laborers
- Problems:
- Only successful during good harvests
- Struggled to maintain machinery and pay salaries to laborers and managers during droughts
and or hard economic times
- By 1890 Bonanza farms ceased to exist