Prairie and badlands meet in this view. In 1862 the first Homestead Act offered a citizen 160 acres in return for living on it and improving it for five years. Exhibits at the overlook explain the homesteading era, and the park's own page says what it took from the Native people who were here first.
Free land, they called this. Homestead Overlook is on your left, and it's the place to think about that. It came at a great cost to Native Americans. Much of it was seized through laws like the Dawes Act. On this road, that means the Lakota. Then the country started collecting from the settlers too. Tar-paper shacks went from claim to claim as one family quit and the next needed a house. You could order a furnished homestead by mail. The first corn on fresh sod came up thick. The second crop withered in the first hot wind of July. By late summer of nineteen eleven, covered wagons were rolling out through Chamberlain, going back the way they came. Later the government erased what was left, on purpose. It tore down buildings, pulled fences and closed roads. It's believed no standing building from before the Park Service survives here. Look out over that grass and try to find one.
Photo: National Park Service, no photographer named, public domain · Public domain