Homestead Acts
With the Homestead Acts of the 1860s and the westward expansion of the railroad, more settlers came to Montana. Not until October 15, 1892, did the federal government through a Benjamin Harrison proclamation open the land around Absarokee for settlement as part of a 1.8 million-acre land cession agreed to by Crow tribal leaders two years earlier after bowing to political pressure. Eleven days earlier on October 4, Sever Simonson and his family had arrived and established squatter's rights at the confluence of the Stillwater and East Rosebud Rivers.