Pioneer Life: Settling on the Homestead

These sites are about daily life on the frontier. Learn about frontier towns and the chores and games that the pioneers participated in. Read the original Homestead Act that prompted many people to move West. Includes videos and historical photographs. There are links to eThemes Resources on pioneer food, sod houses, and hardships along the Oregon Trail.

Grades

Links

PBS: Frontier House: Video Diaries: Watch these video diaries to see how modern families struggled to live like pioneers. Find out what resources they had to use.
PBS: Frontier House: Evaluations: Read what the experts have to say about whether these modern families would have survived on the frontier. What mistakes did they make, and what would you have done differently? Click on “Clune” and “Glenn” to read more.
Nebraska Studies: Explore the links on the left to learn how the settlers found water, built shelter, and battled with harsh weather. Includes many historical photographs.
Pioneer Camera: View historical photographs that show pioneer life taken by Fred Hultstrand.
Pioneer Town Activity: This page has printable templates for creating your own pioneer town.
Nine Patch Quilt Activity: Pioneers often made quilts, and this page has a printable document that students can use to decorate their own quilt.
Coming to Canada: This site is about Canadian settlers, but most of the experiences these people had were very similar to American settlers. Read about how they built their homes and the types of communities that developed.
PBS: Frontier Life: Homestead History: Click on “Take a Journey” to make a virtual visit to Montana in the late 1880s.
Scroll down for essays about life on the homestead. The reading level may be too difficult for students, but the information is useful to teachers.
PBS: Sun River Homestead: Read about three sisters who traveled West to become teachers. Click on “Next” to advance through the site.
PBS: The Homestead Act: Read the text from the Homestead Act of 1862 that prompted many people to move West.
Utah History To Go: Pioneer Girls: Read interesting notes about the lives of six pioneer girls in Utah.
eThemes Resource: Pioneer Life: Food: These sites have information about the types of food the pioneers ate and how they prepared and preserved their meals. Includes recipes for johnnycakes, brown sugar candy, snow ice cream, and molasses cake. Also includes some recipes for Native American and early African American dishes. There are links to eThemes Resources on pioneer life and westward expansion.
Pioneer Life: Sod Houses: These sites are about houses made from sod that many pioneers built and lived in during the 1800s. See photographs of past and reconstructed sod homes in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas. Read letters from people in which they talk about life in sod houses and watch a video tour of a home. Includes a few activities for making a sod house in the classroom. There are links to eThemes Resources on grasslands and pioneer life.
Westward Expansion: Hardships: These sites are about the various hardships the pioneers faced as they traveled to the West. Includes weather information, accidents, and diseases. Read personal narratives and stories.