A man stands by his sod covered home in South Dakota, ca 1900. Photograph: Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis via Getty Images

Settlers rush for chance of a Dakota land plot – archive, 1904

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2 July 1904: Lotteries have been formed in which land sites are the prizes, and all kinds of confidence games are being worked on the waiting thousands of settlers

New York, Friday.
Fifty thousand colonists are encamped in and about the little town of Bonesteel, South Dakota, waiting for the opening of a huge tract of public lands in North-western Nebraska that will be made available for settlers next Tuesday.

From the archive, 20 March 1850: Letter From America: Westward ho! An Englishman in America

It is a horde comprising all classes and both sexes, seeking for new homes that can be had for one dollar an acre. The land is virgin, and its value will advance two and three hundred per cent as soon as the new settlers take possession. Bonesteel has changed from a small village into a huge city of tents spread out for miles. There are thousands of horses and enough cattle to stock a large ranch. People have arrived bringing all their household effects and ready to go to housekeeping as soon as they peg out their little plots in the new territory.

Large crowd with the first of the immigrant trains going to California, 1886. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

A thousand gamblers have been attracted to the place, and faro banks and roulette wheels are going early and late. Some of the settlers have gambled away their last cent and all their possessions, and are counting on retrieving their fortunes by a fortunate selection of a section of land.

Lotteries have been formed in which land sites are the prizes, and all kinds of confidence games are being worked on the waiting thousands. There have been several murders, and vigilance committees have been formed to preserve discipline in old Wild West style, the police present being unable to maintain any order.

Among the prospective settlers are many young women who have arrived unattended. To protect themselves they have formed their tents into a sort of laager and have surrounded them with wire reaching high into the air. The women are in a state of constant terror.

The opening of the lands will be made known on Tuesday by a bugle blast blown by a United States trooper, and at its sound the settlers will rush pell-mell into the territory on horseback and in waggons, the fleetest securing the most desirable sites. By Tuesday night numerous small towns will be dotted over the at present deserted area, and by the end of the week they will begin to take permanent form.

European colonization of Americas killed so many it cooled Earth's climate