It was known as the Homestead Act, passed by the Congress in the year 1862.

It was a well-intended effort to encourage families to move west and settle vast areas of undeveloped public land.

Such westward migration was also stimulated by the government giving railroad companies large tracts of this wilderness area in proportion to the amount of new rail lines they built westward.

Such land, often in better locations, was then advertised for sale by the railroad companies at low prices to lure settlers west.

Such ads were even widely circulated in Europe.

Look, Lisa.

There is opportunity for us in America.

Over the years, hundreds of thousands of families, including great numbers of newly arrived immigrants, took advantage of such land offers, moving out on to the territorial Great Plains, including eastern Colorado.

It's ours Agnes.

In five years, we'll have clear title to it.

But Henry, the prairie is so, so empty, so full of nothing.

There are no rivers or streams close by.

There are no other farms.

There aren't even any trees.

What are we going to build a home with?

Most of these early homesteaders used the only thing nature had left them.

Sod, the top 4 or 5in of soil that was held together firmly by the roots of prairie grasses.

When lifted and cut into large rectangular blocks, sod became an amazing building material.

This old sodding has lasted over a century.

There were hundreds of these soddies built here on the prairie lands in eastern Colorado.

Placed layer upon layer, the sod made a remarkable thick and sturdy wall, helping to keep out the winter cold as well as the summer heat.

When he could afford it, the homesteader, often called a sod buster, used his freighter wagon to haul lumber and heavy building materials from the nearest rail center to improve his home.

Inside, the walls of the soddy were usually whitewashed with a mixture of lime and water to prevent the sod from crumbling so fast.

There were perhaps a few items of furniture that had been brought with the family from back east, including the old stove.

One very important fixture.

It really served two purposes.

Cooking the food as well as heating the house.

The fuel?

Well, at first it was simply dried buffalo or cow manure called chips.

Mother and father slept back here.

The children up in the loft.

Bedtime came early, especially on school nights.

School, you say?

Oh, yes.

Over a hundred years ago, homesteaders were quick to see to the educating of their children.

Only out here on the Prairie School was different since it had only one room.

Tag, youre it.

Come on.

Better not be late.

I'll be ready.

I beat you.

Sara, You're always crowding in.

You're gonna get it.

You don't scare me, Jimmy Wilson All right.

Lets quiet down.

Anne, you have some catching up to do.

I'd like to see you after school for your makeup work.

Yes, ma'am.

Jimmy, you're late again.

But, Miss Bishop, I don't want to hear any more excuses.

You'll see me after school.

Yes.

Mary, I want you to help Melissa with the reading this afternoon.

Henry, I want you to help Tom and Carl with their capital letters.

Let them start with their names first.

The rest of you, get out your slate boards.

We're going to start with sums this morning.

And I want you to copy the problem and then write the answer.

What page have you been reading on, Melissa?

I think I think it was this one.

The funny bone is in the page and jumping up.

I can't get the hang of capitals.

It's just like making a figure eight.

It's have fallen over to the right.

All right, that's better.

The one room schoolhouse was an important part in the lives of many early Colorado homesteaders living here on the plains.

So too, was this invention, the self-regulating windmill automatically adjusting itself to wind pressure, pumping underground water upward into large holding tanks.

For the homesteader, It meant that he would no longer have to haul water from faraway streams and rivers to supply his family needs & any livestock he owned.

His crops, however, would still have to rely upon what nature could provide.

In this semi-arid country, an average of only 15in of moisture each year.

It's no wonder that some people took matters into their own hands.

Greeley, Colorado One of the largest communities in the northeast part of our state.

Named after the well-known publisher of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley.

The growth of the city and its surrounding farmland can be traced directly to a series of ditches and irrigation canals that diverted river water for the development of this early farming community.

Well, the farmer comes to town with his wagon looking down, and the farmer is the man who feeds them all.

If you Greeley was unique from another standpoint, it was organized back in New York City in 1869 as a planned farming settlement.

To this man, Nathan Meeker, agricultural editor of the Tribune and president of the New Colony, goes much of the credit for its early success.

After surveying several sites for the new settlement, a location was agreed upon close to Cache la Poudre River.. and directly on the newly built Denver to Cheyenne rail line.

By May of 1870, the first of the Union colonists began to arrive in their new settlement.

Quickly, the streets were surveyed and laid out, trees were planted, a school was opened, and most important of all, the people dug their first irrigation ditch.

Today, the ditch, over 100 years old and now passing through the center of the city, still runs full much of the year, supplying water for surrounding croplands.

This one, along with others dug in those first years, established an irrigation system that would later be adopted by the U.S.

Bureau of Reclamation for all the mountain states.

The success of the Greeley Colony inspired other cooperative efforts, starting up similar types of communities at Longmont, Fort Collins, and Stirling.

The irrigation boom helped quadruple the number of farms in the region, and sketched out the basic canal system of Colorado's eastern slope.

The farmers went even further in their efforts at landholding.

They began fencing their property, at first, mainly to keep their crops from being trampled and destroyed by these beasts.

They're called just what their horn suggests.

These, of course, are distant relatives of the early longhorns that made up the great herds of trail driven Texas cattle, which in the middle 1860s gave birth to an industry that lasted for almost 30 years.

All right, add ‘em up and move em out.

By 1870, hundreds of thousands of longhorns had been driven up several well-known Texas trails, including the good night loving trail that came up through Colorado Wranglers, cattle bosses, cowboys.

A third of them, either Hispanic or black, worked the large herds for many years.

While many of the Longhorns were sold at rail heads as feeder cattle or for beef to satisfy growing eastern markets.

Great numbers of the animals were bought by northern stockmen to build their own herds for later profits.

The cattlemen in the beginning had no grants or expressed permission to use this government land.

The herds were branded and then simply released to spread out over the prairies.

Many of the animals were never seen by their owners except at roundup times.

For many years the range was open, unfenced, and uncontrolled, except as the cattlemen began controlling it for their own uses.

His name John Wesley Iliff, known far and wide as the Great cattle king of the Western Plains.

Here in northeastern Colorado, were located most of his cattle operations, ranches, and landholdings that extended for 100 miles along the South Platte River, and most importantly, for shipping cattle back east near the newly built Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

Although in later years his residence was in Denver, John Alec was often seen in his buckboard out here on the range, heading for one of his cow camps.

Especially was this true when his good friend Charles Goodnight was about to deliver to him another 25,000 head of longhorns from Texas.

Mr.

Mconnell, what in the world are you doing over here?

Oh, Mr.

Goodnight sent me.

I was hoping to catch you before you got all the way to Fremont's orchard.

Anything gone wrong?

Yeah, we got delayed over here at Sandy Creek.

That thunderstorm the other night, spooked the herd about a thousand head of ‘em scattered afar.

Took us most the day to round em up.

Rest of the drive go all right?

Well, pretty much as usual.

Some of them homesteaders at the Kit Carson Cutoff down there started fencing with that new barbed wire.

We're seeing more and more of it all the time.

Yes, I've heard about it.

Wes.

Over in Kansas, it's already started up range wars between the farmers and ranchers.

Is there anything we can do about it?

I mean, besides cutting our way through it?

In the long run, probably not.

Lots of things are changing out here, Wes.

With property and water rights high on the list.

I'm afraid they'll come a day when this whole range will be fenced.

We better get started for camp.

I'm anxious to see the herd.

I want to breed part of them with some new Durham and Hereford bulls that I bought.

Should produce a heavier steer.

By the way, Mr.

Goodnight saw one of those new fangled refrigerated railroad cars over at the railhead They say it keeps butchered beef cool all the way to Chicago.

Yep.

Homesteaders, ranch men, barbed wire, range wars in between it all a forgotten people.

This is a Cheyenne war lance tipped with a finely honed blade decorated with buffalo hide and eagle feathers.

It was often used as an instrument of warfare, the lance sometimes thrown in the vicinity of white men settlements expressed the anger experienced by Cheyenne warriors against the danger posed by the white people to what the Indians consider to be their land and their way of life.

On the lips of many of the tribal chiefs was the question why doesn't the white man keep his word?

By the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoes had been given joint control over a vast territory of unbroken Buffalo Range between the Oregon and Santa Fe trails, land that included much of eastern Colorado.

Ten years later, the same two tribes, under mounting pressure from the United States government, agreed to move on to a much smaller area known as the Sand Creek Reservation.

There was also the stipulation that the tribes would give up buffalo hunting and learn instead how to farm on 40 acre plots of prairie land.

For many of the younger Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors, it was not acceptable.

By 1864, Indian raids white men Retaliation, unresolved differences on both sides escalated into open warfare here in eastern Colorado.

One such tragedy became known as the Sand Creek Massacre.

At dawn on November 29th, Colonel John Chivington and his contingent of Colorado Cavalry volunteers made a surprise attack on Chief Black Kettle's and Chief White Antelopes encampment, located on the Sand Creek Reservation.

Throughout the morning, the soldiers with rifle and cannon cleared Sand Creek for some two miles of its defenders and completed the destruction of the village.

The cavalry loss was eight men killed, the Indian dead estimated at something under 200.

Two thirds of the bodies counted later were women and children.

What happened at the Sand Creek Reservation certainly didn't settle the differences between the Indians and the white men.

In some ways, it served only to further anger surviving warriors to seek revenge at places like Fort Sedgwick, Julesburg, and at Beecher Island.

The words of Chief White Antelope were like a paradox to this whole Indian problem.

I have told my people that the white settlers are good people.

That peace was going to be made.

When I see the soldiers shooting my people, I do not wish to live any longer.

Nothing lives long.

Only the earth and the mountains.