Special to the HT
MEEKER | Since most of Rio Blanco County was considered public domain in 1883, it was available for homesteading. The Utes had relinquished the White River Reservation but not the right to hunt in the area. This treaty exception was to cause friction for many years.
There were a series of homesteading acts beginning with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The purpose was to put public land into production and generate revenue and taxes. To entice East Coast and European immigrants to move west, public-domain land was offered almost free to anyone willing to file a claim, pay a filing fee, spend five years establishing a habitable residence and attempt some form of cultivation or livestock production.
The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed families to claim 160 acres for agricultural purposes. It was signed into law during the Civil War by President Abraham Lincoln. This allotment worked well in the Midwest, where a farmer could profitably cultivate land without irrigation. In Northwest Colorado, however, water was the defining factor in land value.
If you look at a plat map of early Rio Blanco County, you will see a patchwork of private land crisscrossing the White River from the forest boundary all the way to the state line.
After waiting five years, the homesteader could go to the land office and “prove up” on the claim. For Rio Blanco County, the land office was in Glenwood Springs for many years. Later, Meeker had its own land commissioner.
When the waiting period was complete, homesteaders would publish the legal description of their claim and name several neighbors who would testify at the land office that the claimant had complied with all requirements. This process was known as “proving up.”
It was easy enough. Neighbors often traveled together to the land office and testified for one another. “If you testify for me, I will testify for you” was a common practice.
The system was often abused, especially by large cattle outfits in Routt County. A ranch owner might pay a cowboy to file a homestead claim, pretend to improve and occupy the land, and later sell the homestead to the ranch owner. This provided a cheap way to expand an already large ranch.
If you want to know who proved up on an original homestead, you can search the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website and specify the legal description. The records will show the date the claim was approved and often include an image of the original document. As a rule of thumb, you can subtract five years from the approval date to estimate when the original claim was filed, although the process sometimes took longer than five years.
Many families maintain that an ancestor homesteaded a particular location. The story may be true, but you might not find a BLM-GLO record. The website does not show homesteads that failed to survive the five-year period and never proved up.
Sources: National Park Service; Rio Blanco Historical Society; Rio Blanco County Clerk; Mike Selle; The Museum of Northwest Colorado
