The reminiscences of pioneers often contain stories of their first momentous day or two in the West. They would alight from the trains in the vast flat land of the southern prairies, at a hastily assembled collection of buildings, perhaps to wander alone looking for a boarding house, perhaps to be met by friends, but always to be struck by the novelty of the environment. Then, having selected land and filed a homestead claim, a process that might occur within a week or after several years, new landowners would embark on the journey to their own quarter-section. This photograph shows a married couple heading for their land, loaded down with groceries, an assortment of furniture and utensils, a plow and an extra pair of workhorses. Their goal was a small iron survey stake, just as James Minifie described it in an essay on his father's odyssey in Homesteader: A Prairie Boyhood Recalled:
He set out to find the survey holes which would mark off the boundary of his land. However, four holes sunk flush with the prairie, and a small metal post less than a foot high are not conspicuous landmarks on the boundless prairie, where the sight can range over twenty miles without meeting obstruction.
My father wandered about for most of the morning, stumbling over gopher hills and into badger digs, but never finding the marker holes. Finally, he worked on a grid plan, criss-crossing every twenty yards, until with the sun due south he stumbled into one of the four holes, and with a grunt of triumph pulled out the survey post. II.XII.IX., he read. This was it! This was the north-east corner of Section 2, Township 12, Range 9. There were 640 acres in this section, and of these the western 320 were his homestead and pre-emption. To reach them, however, he still had to pace off 880 yards due west. Keeping the sun high on his left he set off, and on the 880th stride he set up his own marker, a small cairn of field stones which would define the boundary of his land.
