Unfolding the Settlement History of Prairie Pioneers: A Historical GIS Project of South Dakota Homesteaders from 1862 to 1920

In response to the development the U.S. “frontiers,” the 1862 Homestead Act attracted the first settlers, including women and immigrants, to Dakota Territory between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Yet,... [ view full abstract ]

In response to the development the U.S. “frontiers,” the 1862 Homestead Act attracted the first settlers, including women and immigrants, to Dakota Territory between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Yet, few studies have examined the geographic distribution of homesteaders by characteristics such as gender and ethnicity. There are two major obstacles. One is that the historical land patent documents do not include individual demographic and economic information. The other reason is that the land locations are stored in historical paper maps such as a land ownership map, and it is not feasible to manually match individual homesteader to the land and map homesteaders’ characteristics on top of the paper maps. To achieve the goal of mapping homesteaders by gender and ethnicity, the current project proposes two major efforts: (1) Linking the homestead records to the federal decennial census records. In this way, all individual data that are available from the census can be attached to the homestead records. (2) Creating a GIS database that links the homesteaders to the land locations. In this way, the geographic distribution of the homesteaders by gender and ethnicity can be displayed using GIS maps. Spatial concepts and maps have long been part of historical studies, but the emergence of Geographic Information System (GIS), especially the utilization of geodatabases in the past two decades, has created a unique environment for storing, manipulating, and analyzing historical data. This study will utilize GIS methods to bridge the collection of historical paper maps with the collection of homestead records and census records to add a more complete perspective to the settlement history during the Western Expansion. Data and maps needed for this project are drawn from four major sources: (1) Homestead records from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM); (2) federal censuses by the U.S. Census Bureau; (3) historical GIS county boundary maps from National Historical GIS database (NHGIS); and (4) the collection of historical paper maps of land ownership by county managed by the Library of Congress. Homestead records can be downloaded from the BLM’s website. The data provide two sets of key information: the homesteader’s name, residence of county, and the location of the land. The name and county of residence will be used to link the homestead records and the census records that contain demographic characteristics such as gender and place of birth. The land location will be used to map the homestead records on to the land maps. Regarding the maps containing land locations, the map source the collection of historical land ownership maps managed by the Library of Congress. These paper-format land ownership maps will first be georeferenced and then loaded to ArcGIS as the reference layer for the creation of GIS land ownership maps. Homestead records will be linked to the GIS land maps based on the land locations. The spatial attributes (land locations) and non-spatial attributes (homestead records and census data) will be merged and stored in the geodatabase. Spatial distribution of homesteaders by gender and ethnicity.