Backcountry Ghosts: California Homesteaders and the Making of a Dubious Dream

Title Backcountry Ghosts: California Homesteaders and the Making of a Dubious Dream
Names Sides, Josh
Book Number DBC29573
Narrator Brinkman, Susan
Annotation In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, the most ambitious and sweeping social policy in the history of the United States. In the Golden State more than a hundred thousand people filed homesteading claims between 1863 and the late 1930s. More than sixty thousand Californians succeeded, claiming about ten million acres. In Backcountry Ghosts Josh Sides tells the histories of these Californian homesteaders, their toil and enormous patience, successes and failures, doggedness in the face of natural elements and disasters, and resolve to defend hard-earned land for themselves and their children. While some of these homesteaders were fulfilling the American Dream—that all Americans should have the opportunity to own land regardless of their background or station—others used the Homestead Act to add to already vast landholdings or control water or mineral rights. Sides recovers the fascinating stories of individual homesteaders in California, both those who succeeded and those who did not, and the ways they shaped the future of California and the American West.
Length 7 hours 25 minutes
Title Status Active
Local Subject History - US - HUS
History - US - 19th Century - HUN
History - US - 20th Century - HUT
History - US - Westward Expansion - HUSW
Locally Produced - LPD
Pioneers and Frontier Life - Non Fiction - PION
US - Southwestern United States - SW
Adult Nonfiction - AN
Locally Produced - Kansas - LPDK
Language English
Medium Digital Book
Released 2024
Publication Info Kansas Talking Books Emporia, Kansas 2024
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