Literally how the west was won. How else does a 160 acre homestead turn into more. They lied, stole,cheated and killed the way to the top.
I can tell you another way. Within the law. After the open range days in Montana, some decent sized spreads were “approved”. Not too crazy big. These ranches had a lot of hands, and each hand could file for a homestead. They had two years to prove it up. This generally meant a small building and 40 acres under plow.
The main ranch would supply the 17.00 homestead fee, tools and materials needed. Once the two years was up and the land awarded the main ranch would buy out the cowboy. In the area I know of it was generally between 2-300 dollars for the homestead. That was big income for the cowboys at the time.
Once the cowboys sold it back, they could do it all over with another piece.
Seems crazy and eastern Montana grass is good but sparse, plus one needed water. Even with those two things in good shape, it was hard to make a living with finished steers bringing 11-14 dollars. Needed more than a section or two to make a go of it.
Anyway, with a good number of hands cooperating the ranches could grow to quite large sizes. They needed to. This didn’t turn out well all the time as some very bad times went thru and many big spreads went under.
Osky
