Homestead National Historical Park facts for kids
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Homestead National Historical Park
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Former U.S. National Monument
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Inside the Palmer-Epard cabin, with a treadle sewing machine at right and a corn planter out the window
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 Location in Nebraska
Location in the United States
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| Location | Gage County, Nebraska, United States |
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| Nearest city | Beatrice, Nebraska |
| Area | 211 acres (85 ha) |
| Visitation | 123,400 (2017) |
| NRHP reference No. | 66000115 |
Quick facts for kids Significant dates |
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| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHP | January 13, 2021 |
| Designated NMON | March 19, 1936 |
The Homestead National Historical Park is a special place in the National Park System. Before 2021, it was called the Homestead National Monument of America. This park helps us remember the Homestead Act of 1862. This important law let people claim up to 160 acres (about 0.65 square kilometers) of government land. To get the land, they had to live on it for five years. They also had to farm and improve the property. Over time, this Act moved 270 million acres (about 1.1 million square kilometers) from public to private hands.
The park is located about 5 miles (8 kilometers) west of Beatrice, Nebraska. It sits on some of the very first land claimed under the Homestead Act. In 1966, the park was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2015, the United States Mint even made a special quarter coin honoring the park. This coin was part of the America the Beautiful Quarters series.
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Discover the Homestead Heritage Center
The Homestead Heritage Center opened in 2007. It has many cool exhibits. These exhibits show how the Homestead Act affected immigration (people moving to a new country). They also cover farming, Native Americans, and the amazing tallgrass prairie ecosystem. You can also learn about how the government managed land back then.
The roof of the center looks like a plow cutting through the ground. The parking lot is exactly 1 acre (about 4,047 square meters) in size. There's also a separate Education Center. This center offers science and social studies lessons. These lessons can be shared with classrooms all over the United States through distance-learning (learning from far away).
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Heritage Center entrance
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Heritage Center
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Education Center
Explore the Tallgrass Prairie
The park has 100 acres (about 0.4 square kilometers) of tallgrass prairie. This area has been restored to look like the original ecosystem. This type of prairie once covered the central United States. Homesteaders almost completely plowed it away.
The National Park Service has managed this restoration for over 60 years. It's the oldest prairie restoration in the National Park System. To keep it healthy, they regularly mow, hay, and do controlled burns. The park has about 2.7 miles (4.3 kilometers) of hiking trails. You can explore the prairie and the woods around Cub Creek. These trails are even accessible with all-terrain wheelchairs.
Visit the Palmer-Epard Cabin
In 1867, George W. Palmer built the Palmer-Epard Cabin. He used different kinds of wood. The cabin is about 14 miles (22.5 kilometers) northeast of the park. It measures 14 by 16 feet (about 4.3 by 4.9 meters). This cabin shows how people built homes in the area back then. Palmer lived there with his wife and ten children.
Later, between 1875 and 1880, a 10 by 12-foot (about 3 by 3.7-meter) addition was built onto the back. The Palmers lived in the cabin until 1895. Then, they sold it to their nephews. A few years later, the farm was sold to Lawrence and Ida Mumford Epard. They lived in the cabin for almost 40 years. The cabin was given to the park in 1950. It has been moved and fixed up several times since then.
Learn at the Freeman School
The Freeman School is made of thick red brick with carved limestone details. It was the longest continuously used one-room school in Nebraska. It was open from 1872 to 1967. The school also served as a church, a place to vote, and a community center. People held debates, club meetings, and box socials there. The National Park Service has restored the school. It now looks just like it did in the 1870s.
The Freeman School was part of an important court case. This case was about the separation of church and state. In 1899, Daniel Freeman sued the school board. A teacher, Edith Beecher, refused to stop praying, reading the Bible, and singing gospel songs in her class. In the case Freeman v. Scheve, et al. (1902), the Nebraska Supreme Court decided that Beecher's actions went against the state's constitution.
See Old Farm Equipment
You can see old farm equipment at the education center and near the Palmer-Epard Cabin. There are planters, reapers, mowers, and hay stackers, to name a few. Some displays have videos showing how the equipment was used. Other exhibits show how farming tools improved over time. For example, you can see how people went from spreading wheat by hand to using early seed drills.
How the Park Was Created
Daniel Freeman (1826–1908) was from Ohio. He filed the very first homestead claim on January 1, 1863. This happened at the land office in Brownville, Nebraska. By the mid-1880s, Freeman claimed he was the first homesteader in the entire nation. He eventually owned over 1,000 acres (about 4 square kilometers) of land. He became an important person in Gage County.
As early as 1884, Freeman suggested making his homestead a memorial. After he passed away in 1908, people in Beatrice wanted to save his homestead as a national park. Ideas to create the park were turned down for a while. Then, in the mid-1920s, Senator George W. Norris suggested a museum of farm tools on Freeman's land. A local group also put up a marker there.
In 1934, people in Beatrice formed the National Homestead Park Association. This group helped push for the park again. In 1935, Senator Norris and Congressman Henry C. Luckey introduced a law. This law would create the Homestead National Monument of America. It became law in March 1936. But it took until March 1938 to get money from the government to buy the land. There were long talks with Freeman's family about the land's value. The government eventually took ownership at the end of that year.
Some improvements were made to the site. But then World War II started, which stopped visitors and new projects. In the 1950s, the National Park Service got the Palmer-Epard cabin. They also built a visitor center as part of a program called Mission 66. A small museum there showed items donated by the Gage County Historical Society. By 1981, the park had five full-time employees and some part-time and seasonal workers.
In the 1970s and 1980s, park rangers gave living history demonstrations. These showed what life was like back then. Later, some of these activities were seen as not quite accurate for the homestead era. Starting in 1992, under Superintendent Constantine Dillon, the park changed its focus. It moved from just prairie restoration to celebrating the Homestead Act and its impact across the country. Dillon started a new plan for the park and for a new heritage center.
Under Superintendent Mark Engler, the Homestead Heritage Center opened in 2007. It had more interactive displays. These displays looked at the Homestead Act from a wider point of view. A "Living Wall" at the entrance showed the percentage of land successfully homesteaded in each state. In 2021, the monument was renamed the Homestead National Historical Park.
