Homestead Act

The Homestead Act of May 20,1862 (12 stat. 392) followed the popular Donation Land Act of the early 1850s. Thousands more settlers poured into the Oregon Territory with approximately 2300 Jackson County pioneer surnames appearing in federal homestead records as indexed in this site. Sufficient US population had been achieved under the DLC act to declare the northwest as the Oregon Territory under US ownership. The competition for control with Britain, Spain, and Russia had been resolved without war or financial purchase.

The names of claimants under the Homestead Act are herein provided as a complimentary research aide confirming successful claims and therefore the existence of a claim information file in the headquarters office of the BLM in Portland, OR. The library collection does not include homestead files at this time. We can only provide a township map and area map along with the complimentary legal description from the BLM website.

Follow this link, Land Patents Index to return to the land patents index web page.