Laura Ingalls Wilder was greatly impacted as a young girl by the Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Act itself claimed that any individual who had never taken up arms against the United States had a claim to government land. Because travel was incredibly slower, and because families weren’t given the opportunity to choose where their share of land was located, Laura spent much of her early life traveling between plots of land given to her family. When they finally were able to settle, it was because the Homestead Act placed her and her family in Wisconsin. Without the land given to them there would likely be no Little House on the Prairie.