The Homestead Act Commemorative Stamp
Issued in Beatrice,
Nebraska
May 20, 1962
"I would rather be out on the prairie with the grass
and the birds and Pa's fiddle. Yes, even with the wolves!
I would rather be anywhere than in this muddy, cluttered,
noisy town, crowded by strange people.
Pa, when are we going to move to
the homestead?
Excerpt from "By The Shores Of Silver Lake"
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Pa Ingalls planting cottonwood seedlings on the
little homestead on the Dakota prairie
By The Shores Of Silver Lake
Laura Ingalls Wilder
(1939)
Art work by Garth Williams
The prairie sings to me in the forenoon
and I know in the night
I rest easy in the prairie arms,
on the prairie heart..
-Carl Sandburg .
The Cottonwood trees that Pa (Charles Ingalls) planted
as a windbreak on his claim are still standing today.
The old homestead stands empty now,
But the shingles and clapboard hanging free,
Remember together the sad and happy moments
Of the days that use to be.
The Old Homestead
Joseph T. Renaldi
Old homestead and tornado shelter
Oklahoma
"The dust and heat, the burning wind,
reminded us of many things.
We were
talking about
what it is like
to spend one's childhood
in little towns
like these,
buried in wheat and corn,
under stimulating extremes of
climate:
burning summers when the world
lies green and billowy beneath a
brilliant sky,
when one is fairly stifled in vegetation,
in the color
and smell of strong weeds
and heavy harvests;
blustery winters with
little snow,
when the whole country
is stripped bare and gray as
sheet-iron.
We agreed that no one
who had not grown up in a little
prairie town
could know anything about it."
"My Antonia"
Willa Cather
Homesteaders on the prairie
Parkston, South Dakota
(1920)
.jpg)
