The public lands of the United States still unsold and open to settlement are divided into two classes, one class being sold by the Government for $1.25 per acre as the minimum price, the other at $2.50 per acre, being the alternate sections reserved by the United States in land grants to railroads, etc. Such tracts are sold upon application to the Land Register. Heads of families, or citizens over twenty-one years, who may settle upon any quarter section (or one hundred and sixty acres) have the right under the pre-emption law of prior claim to purchase, on complying with the regulations.

Under the homestead laws, any citizen, or intending citizen, has the right to one hundred and sixty acres of the $1.25 land, or eighty acres of the $2.50 land, after an actual settlement and cultivation of the same for five years. Under the timber culture law, any settler who has cultivated for two years as much as five acres in trees of an eighty-acre homestead, or ten acres of a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres, is entitled to a free patent for the land at the end of eight years.