Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Friday, February 8, 2019
February 2, 1919. Beating the high cost of living, Wyoming troops returning home. Senate passes land bill for soldiers. Donuts.
The Wyoming Tribune advised on this Saturday, February 2, 1919 that with a good cow, a flock of hens and a small garden, you could beat old "Mr. H.C.L.", that being the high cost of living.
It's an interesting and possibly accurate observation in some context.
And men from the 41st and 91st Divisions would be back in the U.S. shortly.
The U.S. Senate was anticipating that some of those returning me would want to become agriculturalist, which was in fact correct.
In light of that fact, the Senate's bill did something to give homesteading returning servicemen an advantage, although I frankly don't know what that was. The various homestead acts were still in existence, so they could have homesteaded anyhow. The impact of the law, however, was a real one as I know of at least two instances of individuals who took advantage of this provision and I knew one of them. By reports, this was a fairly popular option for returning World War One servicemen, but a similar effort to reopen the homestead act, on a limited basis, for returning World War Two servicemen, on certain designated grounds (at least some of which were Indian Lands) would not be.
Returning soldiers were celebrated on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, depicting a soon to vanish means of transportation in use by somebody who is probably supposed to be an aged farmer.
Leslie's, on the other hand, was looking back to World War One still and celebrating the Red Cross and Salvation Army donut girl, although having said that the efforts of the Red Cross were still in full swing in Europe, although a lot of those women were now returning home.
If that illustration looks familiar, it's because it was from an actual photograph. And if you have a hankering for trying Great War donuts, here's your chance with the recipe.
The donut girl was one Stella Young, serving in France.
I don't know anything else about her, but I'd note that, while a person isn't supposed to make such observations, she has a classically English appearance and my guess is that was her nationality.
Friday, January 4, 2019
Friday Farming: Campbell County Historic Ranches: the Weischedel Ranch
Campbell County Historic Ranches: the Weischedel Ranch
Original homesteader sought isolation, but his descendants made his ranch a gathering place
Friday, December 30, 2016
Friday Farming: The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916
Today In Wyoming's History: December 29, 1916. Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 becomes law.
Today In Wyoming's History: December 29:
Abandoned post Wold War One Stock Raising Homestead Act homestead.
1916 The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 becomes law. It allowed for 640 acres for ranching purposes, but severed the surface ownership from the mineral ownership, which remained in the hands of the United States.
The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 recognized the reality of Western homesteading which was that smaller parcels of property were not sufficient for Western agricultural conditions. It was not the only such homestead act, however, and other acts likewise provided larger parcels than the original act, whose anniversary is rapidly coming up. The act also recognized that homesteading not only remained popular, but the 1916 act came in the decade that would see the greatest number of homesteads filed nationally.
Perhaps most significant, in some ways, was that the 1916 act also recognized the split estate, which showed that the United States was interested in being the mineral interest owner henceforth, a change from prior policies. 1916 was also a boom year in oil and gas production, due to World War One, and the US was effectively keeping an interest in that production. The split estate remains a major feature of western mineral law today.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
The Wyoming Tribune for September 11, 1916
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
The Cheyenne State Leader for August 10, 1916. One battalion to be ordered to the border.
One battalion of the Wyoming National Guard looked to be deployed. The Guard was nearly one soldier short, however, due to an elopement, one of quite a few that these papers reported on.
And, the World War One homesteading boom was really on.
Friday, May 27, 2016
Friday Farming: Recalling a 1916 homestead
Friday, January 15, 2016
Old Picture of the Day: Homesteader
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Salon: "What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living People say we're "rich in other ways," but that doesn't fix the ugly fact that most farms are unsustainable" ??? OH BULL. You weren't paying attention.

In the "you must be deaf category" is the author of this story that appears on Salon and which has been commented upon by Forbes:
What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living
People say we're "rich in other ways," but that doesn't fix the ugly fact that most farms are unsustainable
My farm is located in the foothills of Northern California, 40 miles east of Sacramento on 10 acres my partner, Ryan, and I lease from a land trust. In the heat of summer, my fields cover the bronzed landscape like a green quilt spread over sand. Ten acres of certified organic vegetables trace the contours of a small valley floor. Tomatoes glow crimson. Flowers bloom: zinnias, lavender, daisies. Watermelons grow fat, littering the ground like beach balls.
Shoot, this isn't even the classic American homestead acreage model.

There’s a really delightful little essay over at Salon about the trials and tribulations of someone trying to make a living as a small scale farmer. Her point being that despite the vast amounts of labour that she and her partner throw at their 10 acres they’re not in fact able to make anything much of a living. This is entirely true of course: their income looks to be about that of a prosperous peasant farmer in the Middle Ages. And that’s the delightful part of the essay, although it’s not quite noted. Simply because the economics of all this is implacable. If you’re trying to live off the produce of 10 acres then your maximum income is going to be the value of what can be produced off 10 acres: not a lot. This is why the Middle Ages, when 90% of the population were trying to live off such plots (often a little larger, 20-30 acres was about right for an English villein) were so darn poor by our standards. This is also why other areas of the world, where people are living off such small parcels of land, are poor today.
What the reporter didn’t ask the young farmers was: Do you make a living? Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage? If the reporter had asked me these questions, I would have said no.
And with only 10 acres are you seriously suggesting you pay labor? People farming on 10 acres don't have paid labor, and they never have. Labor on a small farm is husband and wife, father and mother, uncle, aunt and cousins, and close friends whom you are going to help next. Not you, "partner" and paid labor.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Age and filing homestead claims
21? 18?
Friday, October 2, 2015
The "Homestead" movement
Eh?
It isn't that I'm not sympathetic. And I think the dream of owning your own piece of farm ground and living from it, on your own labor, and in a simple way, is an age old American, indeed North American, one. But I wonder to what extent those trying to enter it in the 19th Century, or even the 18th Century way, but living in the 21st, are realistic.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Friday Farming. The basic unit.
"Forty acres and a mule". The basic agrarian unit in the American east in the 19th Century, and hence the unit that freed slaves were hoping to obtain, with the basic animal necessary to work the same.
"Three acres and a cow." The basic agrarian unit in the United Kingdom in the 19th Century and early 20th Century, and hence the slogan of land reformers and Distributists.
Monday, April 6, 2015
At the end of the road.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Thursday, June 4, 1914. Graduation.
The graduating class of NCHS had their photographs on the front page of the paper. Slightly more were female than male, which was generally the rule at the time. Some familiar last names in the group, including one, Edness Kimball, whose name is memorialized in a city park, and who Wyoming's first female Speaker of the House, and another whose last name, Speas, adorns the fish hatchery. A notable group, we might note, came from ranching families, including one, Grieve
Woodrow Wilson dedicated the Confederate Memorial at Arlington. The teens were the height for romanticism about the "Lost Cause" which saw, in turn, the national culture adopt the Confederates to a certain degree.
A prior thread about the memorial:
The Lost Cause and the Arlington Confederate Monument. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 53d Edition.
Last prior edition:
Monday, June 1, 1914. Advancing war.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Homesteading then and . . .not now.
1862 Congress passed the Homestead Act.As surprising as it is now to think of it, the Homestead Act remained in force until 1932 in the lower 48. The last patents were taken out under the various acts in the 1950s, although entries could still be made in Alaska up until some date in the 1950s. Homesteading remained quite active in the 1919 to 1932 period, as there were efforts to encourage veterans to homestead following World War One, and there was a lot of desperate homesteading in the 1929 to 1932 time frame. A Wyoming Supreme Court decisions on a land contest from that period actually noted that no decision could be reached, as homesteading was carving up the contested lands so fast that the decision would be obsolete by the time it was rendered. The repeal of the act in 1932 was followed by the failure of many of the late smaller homesteads, and a reversal of the trend. The Federal Government reacquired many of the late homesteads by default, and actually purchased a large number of them in the Thunder Basin region of Wyoming, as it was so clear that they would fail in the droughts of the 30s.Following up a bit, it's interesting to note that there were more homesteads taken out under the various Homestead Acts in the 20th Century than there were in 19th. The 1914 to 1919 period saw a huge boom in homesteading.One of the most interesting things about the act was said to me by the grandson of Russian immigrants who had homesteaded outside of Cheyenne, WY, that simply being that "it was a good deal for poor people". I suppose that is true.How many folks here know of a homesteading ancestor in their family?
All of that may not seem directly related, and perhaps it isn't, but it is related.
It's often noted that civilization is closely tied to farming. Indeed, more radical theorists note that humans in a true state of nature don't farm, they hunt. However, that line isn't that clear, really, as there's been a fair number of hunter societies that also farmed as well. Such farming, of course, was "subsistence" farming, but then so was much of American farming in the 19th Century, being agrarian, rather than production agriculture, in nature.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
A Natrona County Homestead
I'm not sure of the vintage of this one, but it was occupied for a long time, probably as late as the 1970s.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Post World War Two Homesteading
The article was on the relationship of Heart Mountain to the minds of various groups of people, and I wasn't wholly impressed. Like some academics, the author was overly impressed with the fact that locals put images of Heart Mountain on signs or name things after it. Well, so what? If you have a business you have to name it something, and a prominent local landscape feature is one of the more obvious choices. After all, you are unlikely to name a veterinary clinic in Cody something like "The Giant Florida Swamp Vet Clinic." I did find it interesting that the mountain was somewhat less mentioned by internees than you'd suspect, and that regional Indians didn't seem to mention it at all in their lore.
Anyhow, one of the things the author keeps bringing up again and again is that it featured in the photographs taken by post World War Two homesteaders. The article suffers from the author's apparent view that everyone knows that there were post wWII homesteaders in the area, even though the Homestead Acts were repealed in in the early 1930s.
Does anyone know the story of post WWII homesteading? I know that some lands were opened back up for returning veterans, sort of an agricultural GI Bill, but that's all I know.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Old Homesteads

I went to a ash spreading (i.e., a type of funeral really) out at an old homestead the other day. By 4x4, it was a long way out. Long, long way, or so it felt. I learned while there that the original homestead had first been filed and occupied in 1917, a big year for homesteading.
It was a very interesting place, and felt very isolated. In visiting about that with my father in law, however, he noted that there had been another homestead just over the hill. And, as I've likely noted here before, there were tiny homesteads all over at that time. It was isolated, but sort of locally isolated. There were, as there were with most of these outfits, another homestead just a few hours ride away, at most, if that.
That is not to say that they weren't way out. I'd guess that this place was at least a full days ride from the nearest town at that time. Even when cars were commonly owned, and they were coming in just about that time, it would have taken the better part of a day to get to town, or a town (there were a couple of very small, but viable towns, about equal distance to this place at that time). It's interesting how agricultural units everywhere in North American have become bigger over time, even if they are all closer now, in terms of time, to a city or town.