Land Patents. The final homestead awarded under the provisions of the Homestead Act, awarded to Kenneth Deardorff, dated May 5, 1988.
The Homestead Act of 1862 accelerated the settlement of the western United States by granting adult heads of families 160 acres of surveyed public lands for a minimal filing fee and five years continuous residence on that land. This record is the final homestead awarded under the provisions of the Homestead Act. Kenneth Deardorff applied for this patent in 1974, but it was finally awarded in 1988 for an 80-acre parcel of land on the Stony River in Alaska.
The Homestead Act was repealed in 1976, but a special provision of the repeal allowed for homesteading to continue only in Alaska until 1986. At this time 3,277 homesteads had been conveyed in the state, which equaled over 360,000 acres, or less than one percent of the total land in Alaska. While most homestead records are housed at the National Archives in Washington, DC, the National Archives at Seattle holds completed homestead records and other land entry case files for states in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska after 1962 in Record Group 49: Records of the Bureau of Land Management.
The final homestead awarded under the provisions of the Homestead Act, awarded to Kenneth Deardorff, dated May 5, 1988. National Archives Identifier: 329122759
View and download the final homestead in Alaska on the National Archives Catalog. This record is one example of the many Land Entry Case Files at the National Archives at Seattle, WA. You can explore more records held at the National Archives at Seattle through the National Archives Catalog or by visiting the National Archives at Seattle. This record is located within Record Group 49: Bureau of Land Management, Alaska State Office, Series: Patented Land Entry Case Files, 1965–1984. Many of the records in this collection have yet to be digitized. We encourage researchers to visit us onsite to explore these records and learn more about the archival collections held at the National Archives at Seattle.