Richmond - Chapter 9

Richmond – Chapter 9
The Frontier Is Settled

The Homestead Act brought many new settlers to Kansas. Life was not easy. The weather conditions were hard on the pioneers. They had to face the heat, blizzards, drought, dust, and grasshoppers. Wood was in rare form, therefore most pioneers had to build their homes out of sod. They had to dig wells for water. Doctors were scarce and many people died from things today that we would never dream of dying from. Many women in the West died during childbirth without the assistance of a doctor. Kansas farmers had to adapt by growing different crops, dry farming, and irrigating in order to be successful in growing their crops, and many times this did not work. We actually have a story in our reading series that goes along with this chapter. It is about a girl that moves with her family to the Dakota Territory and the hardships that they have to face. There is then a short expository story after it that tells of a man in Nebraska that a few years ago decided to build a sod house. He talks of how the sod blocks weighed 100 pounds and he lost 15 pounds in three weeks building the house.