Visit Homestead National Monument in Nebraska

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the Homestead National Monument in Nebraska.

Amy Garrett: Welcome to Homestead National Monument of America. We are here to commemorate the Homestead Act of 1862. We’re here in southeast Nebraska because it kind of makes sense of the monument to Homestead where under the very first claimed was mine. When the original 160 acre claims of Daniel Freeman, he is considered to be the first homesteader. This is a monument to all Homesteaders and there were two million claims filed under the Homestead Act. I hope everyone got homesteads that’s why were called Homestead National Monument of America because over 30 States, more than half of the states in the union were considered Homestead in the states. The monument encompasses the original 160 acres of Daniel Freeman. We also have the oldest restored tall grass prairie in the National Park Service System. It’s the second oldest in the nation. When I think about this, Homesteaders when they claim the 160 acres, they have to farm a minimum of 10 acres. Over the steel plow pulled by a horse or a mule or an oxen just to plow the land. They would have to walk 10 miles for just one acre. So, if they had to plow 10 acres, they would be walking 100 miles. That’s just to turn the soil and then to go back and plant it. So, it wasn’t an easy thing to do. Host: The museum is filled with interesting history and objects related to the Homestead Act. Here too, the monuments distance learning cart. Amy Garrett: This enables us to connect to schools that are outside our commuting distance. You know, field trips are great. It’s wonderful to have a hands-on experience and we do have a really great curriculum based education program but that just has been so tight. A lot of schools are getting rid of their field trips but what we have here is technology that enables us to connect to schools that have the same technology basically and we can offer them curriculum based education programs and I can take this distance learning cart. This cart is a—we have connections throughout the museum here. We have connections out onto the prairie over by our homesteader cabin. We could do a live virtual tour of our homesteader cabin and talk you know, compare and contrast of the 19th century home compared to our 21st century homes and the kids can interact with that environment and see what Homesteaders lived in and then I can compare and say, well, do you see an indoor plumbing? There is no indoor plumbing here. See that? There’s a chamber pot under the bed. Well, where’s the closet? See that trunk over there? And they get a better appreciation I think if they actually see it and I can pan the camera around. They can react to that environment and I can engage them in question and things like that. So, talk about compare and contrast, our one room school which was built in 1872 and it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Daniel Freeman sent his kids down to that school. Well, we can do distance learning connection inside the school. Talk about how school was different back then. Host: This was the first school in the nation to have standardized textbooks 10 years before it was required by law. It’s estimated over 94 million Americans are descendants of the original two million homesteaders.