My Antonia is considered her ultimate achievement, a novel that captures the essence of life on the Nebraska frontier.
The Homestead Act. Nebraska belonged to what was once known as The Great American Desert, which encompassed much of the land between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. Early pioneers either settled in the fertile regions west of the Appalachian Mountains, or followed the Oregon Trail to the West Coast, bypassing the flat, arid, treeless center of the country. As the fertile regions and Far West became more thickly settled, pressure to open the treeless center to settlement mounted. The building of the transcontinental railroad (a cause championed from c. 1848 to its completion in 1869) fomented interest in settling the interior of the country. To this end, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska; but the bill left unresolved the issue of extending slavery into these territories, a hotly debated question that would help propel the country into fighting a civil war.
Encouraging settlement, the Homestead Act of 1862 determined how public lands would be distributed.
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