page_title: Economic history of the United States
section_title: Land grants
hierarchical_section_title: Economic history of the United States / Middle 19th century / Political developments / Land grants
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of a Family with Their Covered Wagon During the Great Western Migration, 1866 Original caption: "The Covered Wagon of the Great Western Migration. 1886 [sic] in Loup Valley, Nebr." A family poses with the wagon in which they live and travel daily during their pursuit of a homestead.
context_page_description: The economic history of the United States is about characteristics of and important developments in the U.S. economy from colonial times to the present. The emphasis is on economic performance and how it was affected by new technologies, especially those that improved productivity, the main cause of economic growth. Also covered are the change of size in economic sectors and the effects of legislation and government policy. Specialized business history is covered in American business history.
context_section_description: The U.S. government owned vast amounts of good land (mostly from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Oregon Treaty with Britain in 1846). The challenge was to make the land useful to people and to provide the economic basis for the wealth that would pay off the war debt.  The government did this by breaking it up into smaller plots for private ownership, through various federal laws.
  Bounty-land warrants were issued to military veterans in the United States from 1775 to 1855.  The land grants were used extensively for settlement of pre-Louisiana Purchase lands east of the Mississippi River, including the Ohio Country, the Northwest Territory, and the Platte Purchase in Missouri.
  About 180 million acres were granted to railroad construction companies between 1850 and 1871.  The Land Grant Act of 1850 provided for 3.75 million acres of land to the states to support railroad projects; by 1857 21 million acres of public lands were used for railroads in the Mississippi River valley, and the stage was set for more substantial Congressional subsidies to future railroads.
  The Pacific Railroad Acts financed several transcontinental railroads by granting land directly to corporations for the first time.  In addition to operating revenues, railroads were able to finance networks crossing vast distances by selling granted property adjacent to the tracks; these would become highly desirable plots for new settlers and businesses because of the easy access to long-distance transportation.
  Morrill Land-Grant Acts starting in 1860 benefited colleges and universities.
  Various Homestead Acts distributed land nearly for free in return for improvements such as building a house, farming, or planting trees. 
  Between 1862 and 1934, the federal government granted 1.6 million homesteads and distributed 270,000,000 acres (420,000 sq mi) of federal land for private ownership. This was a total of 10% of all land in the United States.  Eligibility for the last such program, in Alaska, ended in 1986.  The Land Office made about 100 million acres of direct sales in the western United States from 1850 to 1900, benefiting cattle ranchers and speculators.
  The economic and military power of the federal government was used to clear Native Americans from land desired by European-American settlers.  Land grants creating the Indian Reservation system were used by the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 to segregate native tribes, but later acts opened some of that land to white settlement, notably including a land run opening the Unassigned Lands in Oklahoma. The Dawes Act of 1887 pressured Native Americans to assimilate to European-American culture, offering former tribal land to individuals separating from their tribes and putting "surplus" reservation land up for auction.  Overall, about half of Indian Reservation land was sold to white Americans by 1906, about 75 million acres.
caption: Homesteaders in central Nebraska in 1886
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