216 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



bountiful table to increase their holdings up to a full 

 640 acres. 



Listen. If you have already taken up under the home- 

 stead laws 160 acres of land "of the same character" as 

 the 640 acre law describes, you may, under this law, add 

 to your acreage enough more to make a total of 640 

 acres, and what's better yet you can look for it any- 

 where within a radius of 

 twenty miles from your 

 original location. This ad- 

 ditional land you do not 

 have to live upon, but in- 

 stead of residence and culti- 

 vation you are to place upon 

 it improvements to the 

 value of $1.25 an acre, one- 

 half of which must be plac- 

 ed there within the first 

 three years after entry. 



Perhaps you have already 

 secured we will say, 320 

 acres such as the law de- 

 scribes, the title to which 

 has passed from the gov- 

 ernment to you and there 

 is no land within this twenty miles limit on which you can 

 file to make up a full 640 acres. Very good. Section 6 

 of the law makes especial provfsion for this by giving 

 you the right to relinquish to the United States your 

 320 acres if you haven't plastered it with a mortgage 

 and then if you can find 640 acres of the right kind of 

 land anywhere "within the limits of the land office 

 district in which the entryman lives," you can begin all 

 over again and file on the new tract of 640 acres. 



Moreover, any one entitled to make additional entry 

 under any of the provisions of this law is a preferred 

 appli cant to 

 the land im- 

 mediately ad- 

 joining his 

 original home- 

 stead entry for 

 ninety days af- 

 ter the land is 

 designated for 

 entry under the 

 law. 



Re sidence 

 upon the origi- 

 nal 640 acre 

 tract must be 

 in accordance 

 with all the 

 provisions of the homestead laws, which is three years, 

 but, instead of cultivation for the land is presumed to 

 be fit only for grazing purposes the entryman must 

 prove that he has expended on the land the required 

 $1.25 per acre. 



If you build a thousand dollar house on the place, 



iVHERE NERVE AND DETERMINATION MEAN SUCCESS 

 This is a typical dry farm homestead in the dry farming region. 



A TYPICAL HOMESTEAD SCENE 

 This shows a settler hard at work, breaking up the sod on a new homestead in the 



its cost does not go to the credit of this $1.25 an acre 

 for the improvements must be in the nature of stock 

 raising improvements and a house for the dweller and 

 his family to live in is of no value to the stock so the 

 land office says. 



A well, corrals, fencing and such improvements will, 

 however, meet the requirements of the law so 



the land office again says. 

 The instant the bill pass- 

 ed letters poured into every 

 western land office seeking 

 further information as to 

 the law, where the lands 

 lay, and how soon they 

 could be filed on. To facili- 

 tate reply to these inquiries 

 the land office issued a cir- 

 cular ("Circular 523 Gen- 

 eral Land Office") giving 

 all available information as 

 to the law and the rulings 

 upon it to date. Every pros- 

 pective settler should secure 

 a copy of this before taking 

 any steps to locate land. 

 There is so much left to the imagination of the settler 

 that a word of caution should be given to those who fond- 

 ly imagine that all they have to do to secure 640 acres 

 of this land, is to go to some western state and grab one 

 of these mile square pieces of the public domain the 

 instant they step from the train. 



There are a lot of mighty cogent reasons why this 

 cannot be done, the principal one being that ever since 

 the 640 law was introduced in Congress every wide-awake 

 western citizen and there are several of them has had 

 his eye on a tract suitable for entry. Just the instant the 



bill passed these 

 early birds got 

 busy and took 

 advantage of a 

 little joker in 

 the law which 

 allows properly 

 qualified per- 

 sons to select a 

 tract of land 

 for entry with- 

 out waiting for 

 its formal 

 classification, 

 notify the land 

 office of its lo- 

 cation, pay the 

 fees and commissions and sit tight in the knowledge 

 that you have first claim on the land over all comers for 

 ninety days after it had been classified and thrown open 

 to entry. Within three months after this law was passed 

 and before a single acre of land had been classified over 

 fifty thousand individuals had filed such a preliminary 



'land of promise.' 



