Homestead Act

American  

noun

1. a special act of Congress (1862) that made public lands in the West available to settlers without payment, usually in lots of 160 acres, to be used as farms.

---

Homestead Act British  

noun

1. an act passed by the US Congress in 1862 making available to settlers 160-acre tracts of public land for cultivation

2. (in Canada) a similar act passed by the Canadian Parliament in 1872

---

Homestead Act Cultural  

1. A law passed in the 1860s that offered up to 160 acres of public land to any head of a family who paid a registration fee, lived on the land for five years, and cultivated it or built on it.

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Homestead Act

The Homestead Act settled Americans in large numbers in the trans-Mississippi West.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2025

As a high school student in San José, Chavez-Garcia knew none of this history — “we learned more about the Homestead Act in the Midwest,” she joked.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2025

The group recommended formalizing which vehicles meet the criteria of the Homestead Act, saying they must have at least three of the following:

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 23, 2023

One policy, the Homestead Act, made millions of acres of government-held land available at very low cost.

From Salon ● Aug. 14, 2022

In a little while they sent out a branch colony to Icaria, in Adams county, Iowa, where they purchased, or entered under the Homestead Act, four thousand acres of land.

From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science October, 1877. Vol XX - No. 118 by Various

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---