The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, sometimes known as the Donation Land Act, was a statute enacted in late 1850 by the United States Congress. It was intended to promote homestead settlements in the Oregon Territory. The law, a forerunner of the later Homestead Act, brought thousands of white settlers into the new territory, swelling the ranks of settlers traveling along the Oregon Trail. 7,437 land patents were issued under the law, which expired in late 1855. Along with other US land grant legislation, the Donation Land Claim Act discriminated against nonwhite settlers and had the effect of dispossessing land from native americans.
History
The passage of the law was largely due to the efforts of Samuel R. Thurston, the Oregon territorial delegate to Congress. The act, which became law on 27 September 1850, granted of designated areas free of charge to every unmarried white male citizen eighteen or older and to every married couple arriving in the Oregon Territory before 1 December 1850. In the case of a married couple, the husband and wife each owned half of the total grant under their own names. The law was one of the first that allowed married women in the United States to hold property under their own name. "American half-breed Indians" were also eligible for the grant. A provision in the law granted half the amount to those who arrived after the 1850 deadline but before 1854. Claimants were required to live on the land and to cultivate it for four years to own it outright.
Limitations
The provisional government formed at Champoeg had limited the land claims offered in the hope of preventing land speculation. The Organic Act of the Oregon Territory had granted 640 acres to each married couple. The new law voided the previous statutes but essentially continued the same policy and was worded in such a way as to legitimize existing claims. One such claim legitimized by the act was that of George Abernethy, who had been elected to the governorship in the days of the provisional government. His claim became famous for Abernethy Green, where new emigrants camped at the end of the Oregon Trail while seeking a piece of land for themselves.
After the 1855 cut-off date, the designated land in Oregon was no longer free but was still available, selling at $1.25 an acre, with a limit of 320 acres in any one claim. The law expired on December 1, 1855. In the following years, the price was raised and the maximum size of claims was progressively lowered. In 1862, Congress passed the first of the "Homestead Acts," which was largely designed to encourage settlement of the Great Plains states, but applied to Oregon as well.
