Walk in Their Shoes

To get an idea of what it was like to be homesteaders, consider the labor of walking and plowing an acre of land enclosed by the flags around the parking lot. Though an acre may not seem huge, plowing it meant walking about 10 miles over uneven soil while driving a team of oxen in sun or rain. Multiply that effort by 160, the size of a typical homestead. As Willa Cather wrote in My Antonia in 1918, there seemed to be nothing to see—no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields—nothing but land, not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.

Beatrice, Nebraska · United States