They Settled in Montana: The Act

Updated: February 5, 2026

The Homestead and land acts changed Montana by encouraging thousands of people to move in, try farming and ranching in a very dry place, and then struggle when the climate turned drier again. Scientists and historians today also point out that these laws damaged grasslands, changed Native peoples' lives, and reshaped Montana's environment in ways we can still see.

Homesteading basics

• The Homestead Act of 1862 let adults claim 160 acres of public land if they lived on it and improved it (for example, by farming or building) for five years, a process called "proving up."
• Homesteaders could instead live there for at least six months and then buy the land for about $1.25 per acre, plus a filing fee of around $10.
• In wetter places east of Montana, 160 acres was usually enough land for a family farm that grew corn, wheat, and other crops using only rainfall.
• In much of Montana, especially the eastern plains, the climate is arid (dry), with under about 15-20 inches of rain per year, so crops often need irrigation or special "dryland" methods to grow well.

Scientists and geographers talk about the 100th meridian, a north-south line through the Great Plains, as a rough divider between wetter lands to the east and much drier lands to the west. At first, most homesteaders stayed east of this line, so Montana filled more slowly than places like Kansas or Nebraska.

Montana's early settlers and Native peoples

• Montana's first recorded Homestead claim was filed by a woman in 1868 near Helena, which is now the state capital.
• Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet planted wheat and other grains in the Bitterroot Valley, both to feed his mission and to show local Native people how Euro-American farming worked.
• Long before homesteaders arrived, Native nations such as the Aaniinen (Gros Ventre), Apsáalooke (Crow), Assiniboine, Blackfeet, Chippewa Cree, Salish, Kootenai, and Northern Cheyenne managed the land through hunting, gathering, and carefully set fires that helped prairie plants and animals.
• As more homesteaders and ranchers came, the U.S. government forced Native peoples onto smaller reservations, cut off access to many hunting grounds, and took most of the fertile river valleys and grasslands for settlers.

Historians today stress that homesteading and the land acts were part of a larger process of taking Native lands and changing traditional ways of life, not just "empty land" being settled.

Why 160 acres didn't work well in Montana

• Explorer and scientist John Wesley Powell studied western rainfall and argued that in dry regions, farms needed much more land than 160 acres to succeed.
• Powell suggested that truly arid grazing land should be divided into units as large as 2,560 acres for a single ranching family to have enough grass and water for livestock.
• In eastern Montana's high plains, there is often no nearby surface water, and wells may be deep or unreliable, so 160 acres might support only a few cows and a small garden.
• Over time, farmers experimented with "dryland farming" techniques-such as summer fallow (leaving fields unplanted some years to store moisture), deep plowing, and drought-tolerant wheat varieties-which helped eastern Montana produce excellent wheat during wetter periods.

Modern climate records show that the northern Great Plains, including Montana, have long cycles of wet and dry years, so a farm plan that works in a wet decade can fail badly in a dry decade.

The Desert Land Act of 1877

• To encourage settlement of very dry regions, Congress passed the Desert Land Act in 1877, allowing individuals to claim up to 640 acres (one square mile) if they could irrigate the land within three years.
• Claimants had to pay 25 cents per acre at the start and then an additional $1 per acre after they had built the irrigation works.
• In the first four years, people filed about 370 Desert Land claims in Montana Territory, covering about 122,000 acres, while regular homestead entries covered around 93,671 acres.
• Large cattle companies often hired men to file as individuals, built a small cabin and some ditches, and then had the men turn the title over to the company once the three years were up.

Historians and environmental scientists now say that the Desert Land Act helped cause overgrazing and the loss of many native prairie grasses and shrubs in places like Montana, because it encouraged too many cattle on fragile rangelands with limited water.

The Enlarged Homestead Act and the "honyockers"

• In 1909, Congress passed the Enlarged Homestead Act, which doubled the size of many claims from 160 acres to 320 acres in semi-arid areas like Montana.
• The law required homesteaders to continuously cultivate at least one-eighth of their land in crops other than native grasses, pushing people to plow up prairie sod.
• Around the same time, the climate entered a relatively wet period, and railroad companies heavily advertised Montana as a land of "free" or low-cost farms, so thousands of new settlers-often nicknamed "honyockers"-poured into the state.
• In 1912, a new Three-Year Homestead Law cut the "proving up" time from five years to three and allowed homesteaders to be away from their claims up to five months each year, making it easier for more than 80,000 people to file in Montana between 1909 and the early 1920s.

One historian calls this surge into northeastern Montana "the largest successful movement of homesteaders in U.S. history," as grasslands were quickly turned into a patchwork of small farms and new towns.

Boom, bust, and long-term changes

• Bankers, railroad agents, and land companies all profited during the boom years, as new counties and towns appeared and people borrowed money for equipment, homes, and livestock.
• Many farmers plowed large areas of native grassland and planted wheat or other grains, often using methods that did not protect the soil from wind and drought.
• When drier weather returned in the 1910s and 1920s, crops failed more often, winds blew away exposed topsoil, and many families could not pay back their loans.
• By the late 1920s, about 60,000 of the homesteaders who had arrived since 1909 had left Montana or been drawn away by World War I and other opportunities, leaving behind abandoned farms and struggling small towns.

Scientists and land managers today point out that overgrazing and overplowing during these homestead years changed Montana's plant communities, reduced some native species, and increased erosion, leading later governments to pass laws to control grazing and conserve soil. These changes still shape Montana's farms, ranches, and landscapes that you can see if you travel across the state today.

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Updated: February 5, 2026