Environmental Obstacles

Climatic conditions in the West were both unpredictable and dangerous. The land distributed under the Homestead Act was often dry and barren. Homesteaders frequently faced droughts, floods, blizzards, hail, and the type of windstorms depicted in L. Frank Baum’s fictitious The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that blew Dorothy, a 20th-century Kansas farm girl, away from her home. The vulnerability of homesteaders’ crops to the elements sometimes led to starvation and economic failure. The climate also threatened homesteaders’ houses, which were often built out of sod or mud.