National Park Service seeks Indiana homesteaders

INDIANAPOLIS — The National Park Service is looking for Indiana residents who participated in the federal Homestead Act or their descendants to represent the state at the bill’s 150th anniversary celebration.

The act allowed citizens to claim 160-acre plots across the American frontier beginning in 1862 until its repeal in 1976. Representatives from each of the 30 states that honored the act will carry their states’ flags and march in parades May 20 and June 16 at the Homestead National Monument in southeast Nebraska.

Thirty successful homestead claims were made in Indiana while the act was in place.