Editing Homestead Acts (section)

== In popular culture ==
{{in popular culture|section|date=October 2018}}
{{unreferenced|section|date=February 2025}}
* [[Laura Ingalls Wilder]]'s ''[[Little House on the Prairie]]'' series describes her father and family claiming a homestead in [[Kansas]], and later [[Dakota Territory]]. Wilder's daughter [[Rose Wilder Lane]] published a novel, ''[[Free Land (novel)|Free Land]]'', which describes the trials of homesteaders in what is now [[South Dakota]].
* [[Willa Cather]]'s novels ''[[O Pioneers!]]'' and ''[[My Ántonia]]'' feature families homesteading on the Great Plains.
* [[Oscar Micheaux]]'s novel ''The Homesteader: a Novel'' (1917) is a semi-autobiographical story of an [[African American]] homesteader in South Dakota shortly after the turn of the 20th century.
* The [[Rodgers and Hammerstein]] musical ''[[Oklahoma!]]'' is based in the [[Oklahoma land rush]].
* The 1962 [[Elvis Presley]] musical film ''[[Follow That Dream]]'', adapted from ''[[Pioneer, Go Home!]]'' (1959), features a family that homesteads in [[Florida]].
* The movie ''[[Far and Away]]'', starring [[Tom Cruise]] and [[Nicole Kidman]], centers on the main characters' struggle to "obtain their 160 acres."
* The miniseries [[Centennial (miniseries)|''Centennial'']] depicts the homestead development of an eastern Colorado town.
* The 1953 movie ''[[Shane (film)|Shane]]'' depicts some early homesteaders in Wyoming opposed by a cattle baron who abuses, threatens and terrorizes them, calling them "pig farmers," "sod-busters," "squatters" and other taunts and insults. When the rancher gets violent, the homesteaders are divided over whether to leave or to hold onto their claims. A drifter working on one of the homesteads reluctantly tries to take action.
* The 2016 film ''[[The Magnificent Seven (2016 film)|The Magnificent Seven]]'', loosely adapted from [[The Magnificent Seven|the 1960 film of the same name]], features Sam Chisolm, an African American [[United States Marshals Service|U.S. Marshal]] raised on a homestead in [[Lincoln, Kansas]]. His family had been [[Lynching in the United States#Disenfranchisement|lynched]] in 1867 by former [[Confederate Army]] soldiers, hired by a [[robber baron (industrialist)|robber baron]] to drive off settlers and free up real estate on the [[American frontier]].