Daniel Freeman laid claim to a 160-acre homestead here in 1863 on prairie land that is being restored to resemble what he saw. Settlers on the tallgrass prairie faced brutal challenges, including blizzards, prairie fires, tornadoes, plagues of grasshoppers, and many other calamities, yet millions of people flooded land in 30 states to carve out a better life. Through the Homestead Act, families, immigrants, single women, ex-soldiers, freed slaves, and fortune seekers settled ten percent of all the land in the United States, and their hard work changed America forever.