The Homestead Act of 1862 had a direct impact on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life and her family’s experiences on the American frontier and her father’s desire to be moving west, which is a central theme throughout the Little House books.
The act provided an opportunity for people like Laura’s father, Charles Ingalls, to claim a parcel of public land for themselves for a small fee (Charles remarks it cost him fourteen dollars to claim the land in De Smet, SD in the book By the Shores of Silver Lake). Laura’s family homesteaded on the prairie in Kansas, which they were forced to leave after it was determined that their land was not in the land permitted for settlement, in Walnut Grove (which they never proved up on) and later in Dakota Territory near the town of De Smet.
The theme of many of the books focus on Charles Ingalls ever present wanderlust and his desire to keep heading westward until they finally settled in De Smet, South Dakota permanently.
