To encourage people to move to the Great Plains, Abraham Lincoln passed the Homestead Act. Settlers were given 160 acres that, for a small fee, they could live on and farm for five years. The homesteaders claimed land in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakota Territory.

Even though the climate was uncooperative and land was difficult to farm, the new settlers were determined. They used the grass roots above the soil, or sod, to build their houses. New inventions, like the chilled-steel plow, barbed wire, the windmill, and a new kind of wheat that could survive the Plains, helped to make life easier.

Many African Americans in the South went to the Great Plains to escape violence and unfair treatment. Twenty thousand African Americans from the South went to Kansas in 1879, and they became known as exodusters. Other parts of California, Oregon, and Washington were also settled by African Americans.