In 1880 settlers began to arrive in the area in the anticipation of the completion of the railroad and the arrival of more people. Here was an opportunity to acquire land that could later be sold to the newcomers.
There were several ways to acquire land, one of which was called pre‑emption. People who moved to unsettled areas and began to live there were called squatters. Real estate speculators, called claim jumpers, would often work with lawyers to take the squatter's land. Congress passed a law in 1841 that said that a squatter who lived on surveyed government land and made improvement on it, had a right to buy that land before anyone else. When the land occupied came up for sale, he could buy up to 160 acres for $1.25 an acre.
After the Civil War, big land companies sent out "dummy squatters" who filed applications for land that they did not intend to keep as their own. In return for cash payment, a dummy would file his claim, live on it for six months, buy it for a low price, and hand it over to his employer. Then he would move on to another claim. Two hundred million acres of land passed from the government‑to private owners in this manner. The practice was discontinued in 1891.
Another method of acquiring land was through the Homestead Act which was passed in May 1862, to encourage people to go to the unsettled areas. This provided that any person over the age of 21, who was the head of the family, could obtain title for 160 acres of land, if they lived on the land for five years and improved it. Another provision of the act was that they could buy the land for $1.25 an acre and not fulfill the resident requirement.
From 1862 to 1900 this bill provided farms and new homes for between 400,000 to 600,000 families. Another additional 160 acres of land could be acquired if 10 acres were planted into trees. These grants were known as "tree claims". The story is told that some of the settlers didn't want to bother with planting trees so they planted turnips instead!
Another way of attaining this new land was through the railroad. When the Northern Pacific took on the project of building a railroad across the United States they were given land forty miles north and 40 miles south of the tracks. The railroad also sold bonds to help finance their venture. When the railroad failed on September 18, 1873 people who held these bonds were allowed to cash them in for some of the railroad land. Consequently large bodies of land were bought by the non‑resident holders of these bonds for little or nothing. Some of the large purchasers included Pence and Snyder of Minneapolis who bought large tracts of land in Foster and Ransom counties. Some of this land was said to belong to two grain dealers from Toledo, Ohio, by the name of Miles D. Carrington and T.B. Casey who purchased 40,000 acres in Foster County from Pence and formed a company known as the Carrington-Casey land company. At the start, they owned every other section of land in Wyard, Carrington and Bordulac townships.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 28