I spent the night in Beatrice, Nebraska, just 4 miles from the National Homestead Memorial. SO I had to go visit. The National Park Service has done a very good job. The Visitor's Center/Memorial is on the edge of the "first recorded homestead." The "first" is in parenthesis because no one knows for sure which was actually recorded first, but legend has it that this was the first one. The displays are pretty well balanced, including discussing the then prevalent view of the white man's superiority over the Native Americans, and therefore a right to take the land for the white man's use. That is, the view that the white man could and would out the land to its proper use.
The building design is quite nice, I think. On the wall along the walkway to the entrance are hung steel plates in the shape of each of the 40 States where homesteading under the Act was permitted. In the center of the map is a square cut-out representing how much of the State was homesteaded.
We often forget the role that Black Americans played in populating the West.
Including the family dog was important to this family for some reason. We see it over and over in these centuries old photos though, the inclusion of pets and livestock as part of the family photo.
And they lived and thrived in small houses, too. The color photo is of a cabin moved to the memorial site from a short distance away.
(It was National Bike to Work Week).
The Park Service is returning the land to the natural prairie. They've been working on it for about three decades. It's beautiful.
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