 homesteading in Alaska took several steps and certain requirements to meet before land could be used, the families within Alaska all worked together to make their living quarters more suitable for each member of the family.
When land was approved for homesteading and the building of homes started, the first proved up was to build a cabin. Homesteaders needed to build a cabin to withstand the harsh cold months of Alaska’s winter. One cabin is still in use over 40 year after it was built and is similar to the cabin being rented in the article Homesteading Challenges (1997) by Dexter, Dexter, Hausmann and IIten.
While building a home was not always an easy task, homesteaders in Alaska managed to make their living quarters suitable for long cold wintery months. Homesteaders often liven in small living quarter to keep the heat in a tighter space.
With limited resources available to homesteader’s and the lack of transportation, building equipment, machinery, supplies and tools homesteaders often relied on the help from a neighbors for these items (Alaska, 2008b).
Getting help from a neighbor was hard to do when you had to travel by horseback and travel some 15 miles or more to reach the closest neighbors house, cabin or tent. Some homesteader even traveled by dog sled to reach a helping hand from their neighbor (Alaska, 2008a).
Using building materials to build a cabin was a struggle when homesteaders had to transport materials to their land before construction could begin. The author Harrington and Merken describe in their article Life on America’s Last Frontier: Alaska’s (1995) about their experiences sitting in a outhouse in - 40 degree temperatures and giving a new meaning to “freezing your buns off.”
Since the building of the cabin was difficult to master quickly most homesteaders managed to complete the first prove up within the first year of claiming the land. When homesteader finished the first prove up he or she had to immediately begin working on the second prove up to ensure they could meet all requirement to receive land ownership (Harrington & Merken, 1995).
After the first prove up of the cabins were complete homesteaders moved on to the second prove up which was cultivating a portion of the land without harming to the natural beauty of the land (Alaska, 2008a).
Cultivating the land was a challenge when the Department of Natural Resources required all land owners keep the land free from being destroyed by removing trees or disturbing the lands natural beauty. Meanwhile having equipment available for cultivating the land was also a struggle for the homesteaders (Merrick, 2000).
Homesteaders often found it difficult to meet homesteading requirements where cultivation was concerned, because Alaska was strict about preserving the lands natural beauty (Merrick, 2000).
With issues meeting the cultivation requirements for the land ownership, Homesteaders were granted the right to remove some trees by chainsaw to meet the land cultivation guidelines (Alaska, 2008a).
After removing the trees the homesteaders were able to meet the required cultivation requirement of a minimum of 10 percent or 1/8 of the land for cultivation. “Homesteaders in Alaska were soon participating in cropping activities that today are not widely considered to be customary or traditional to Alaska Native communities” as the authors Loring and Geriach describe in their article Outpost Gardening in Interior Alaska: Food System Innovation and the Alaska Native Gardens of the 1930’3 through the 1970’s (2010).
Once homesteaders were cultivating the land they soon faced a problem with keeping the wildlife animals away from their cultivation areas. Homesteaders soon began to build so called fences, since they did not have sufficient material to build a fence they used the material they had at their disposal (Loring, Geriach, 2010).
With the help of a 48’ x 24’ garden fence homesteaders were able to keep wildlife like moose out of their cultivation areas during the first five years of homesteading to receive their legal land patent. According to the articl