Little Homestead on a Tiny Island

There was a nice-looking Minnesota dairy barn on the other side of the road from my resting place at Oaks Lake. But as I got closer, I saw that it was a former dairy barn. The place looked like it may have been an active farmstead recently, but no longer.

Four miles north there was another fine setting for a farm near water.

According to the BLM’s land patent database, the land shown in these two photos was homesteaded under the famous 1862 Homestead Act. That got me to thinking (for no particularly good reason). I wondered how far I would have to go from my home near Battle Creek to get to a parcel of land that was obtained under the 1862 Homestead Act. One can search the database for parcels obtained under any particular act of Congress, so it’s not extremely hard to find out. I didn’t want to take the time to look in all directions, though, so decided to pick the direction of Black Hawk’s home. I started with Calhoun County, then went south to Branch County, then west to St. Joseph County, Cass County, Berrien County, St. Joseph County, Indiana, and LaPorte County. And there, in LaPorte County, I found one of those 1862 Homestead Act homesteads.

It consisted of 1.5 acres on an island in a lake — nothing at all like Pa Ingalls wanted for a farm, but it’s patented under the same Homestead Act as those Minnesota farms were.   I wonder if there is a story of how somebody realized that it had been overlooked by all of the land buyers up until then, so decided that was a good way to take ownership. It’s very close to Black Hawk’s old path, so I’ll probably ride there to take a look some time.

Here it is: a patent for “one acre and forty five hundredths of an acre”.