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The future seemed especially promising – so much so, in fact, that most Montana homesteaders readily heeded the calls by government officials and bankers to "do their patriotic duty" and reinvest their profits in more land and machinery. "Food will Win the War!" the era's propaganda posters proclaimed, and with readily available credit, Montana's homesteaders mortgaged virtually everything in hopes of cashing in on the soaring economy. By Armistice Day in 1918, the state's population had c...
Several short-term trends helped trigger Montana's remarkable homestead boom. The most significant was the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909, which doubled the free land available to settlers to 320 acres. In 1912, Congress went even further, lowering the required waiting period for land acquisition from five to three years, while also permitting homesteaders to be absent from their lands five months of each year. Together, these laws generated an eager response, ensuring that nearly 32 million...
"As I looked across the rolling expanse of prairie, filled with the beauty of a Montana sunset, I sent up a little prayer of thanksgiving from my heart for this our very first home. Only a rectangle of prairie sod, raw and untouched by the hands of man, but to us it was a kingdom ... "... We have no regrets; life is fuller and sweeter through lessons learned in privation, and around our homestead days some of life's fondest memories still cling. We are of Montana, now and always ... I feel that...
