Homestead Act - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series describes her father and family claiming a homestead in Kansas, and later Dakota Territory.
• Willa Cather's novels, O Pioneers! and My Ántonia, feature families homesteading on the Great Plains.
• Kirby Larson's young adult novel, Hattie Big Sky, explores one woman's attempts to "improve" on her family's homestead before the deadline to retain her rights.
• The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma is based in the Oklahoma land rush.
• The 1962 Elvis Presley musical film, Follow That Dream, adapted from Pioneer, Go Home! (1959), features a family that homesteads in Florida.
• The movie Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, centers on the main characters' struggle to "obtain their 160 acres."