The federal government disposed of public lands in the West a variety of ways. It sold it, often to speculators; it gave vast tracts away to states and railroads; and with the Homestead Act of 1864, it made it available free to settlers. The Act granted 160 acres of public domain to any citizen or intended citizen who occupied it for five years. The homesteader could also purchase his land after six months for $1.25 per acre. but laxity in the law’s administration led to much abuse. Many claimants were not bonafide farmers, but dummy registrants acting for speculators, cattlemen and lumber and mining interests. In addition, the 160 acres allotted, while adequate in the East, was too small a unit on which to farm successfully in the dry High Plains. In time, however, modifications were made and many thousands of farmers established homesteads in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and in the most dramatic fashion, Oklahoma. There, at noon on April 22, 1889, the government threw open two million acres of unassigned lands in Indian Territory for homesteading. When the starting guns and bugles sounded, more than 50,000 people — on foot, horses, cycles and wagons — surged across the border on a “run” to claim the best land. Similar landruns followed. But it was not only the Homestead Act that lured farmers to the Plains. The states and railroad companies were also active recruiters of settlers.