Palouse People: "Women Homesteaders of the Palouse"

In celebration of Women’s History Month, Kathy Meyer will discuss some of the women who homesteaded on the Palouse on their own, whose hard work and endurance — and indeed their very names — historians have only just begun to study. Did you know that nearly 20% of homesteaders in the Midwest and West were single women, divorcees and widows? The Homestead Act, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1962, granted 160 acres of unappropriated public land to anyone of any race who was the head of a household — mostly men.