Land Occupancy, Ownership and Use on Homesteads In Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, 1955.

Abstract

The Kenai Peninsula is an Alaskan Mecca for many venturesome families newly arrived from the States. They flock there each year searching for " free" land and fresh opportunity in a new country. Business at the Anchorage Land Office continues briskly as new frontiersmen apply for the right to enter the public domain. Numerous applications for homestead entry are still filed despite a recent change in the Homestead Act requiring cultivation by all entrymen, whether veteran or not, and d~spite the fact that accessible agricultural land along the Peninsula's roads has already been culled over. Most new arrivals know little about pioneering or Alaskan conditions. They often have no experience in rural living. All too many find that Alaska is a hard bargain~r, taking their savings and their hopes and giving them in return a bit of land which they are powerless to use. Settlement continues to outpace farm development and even interest in farm development. On the other hand, interest in farm development is also definitely increasing.