Editor's Note

Between 1863 and 1961, approximately 1.6 million homesteaders successfully staked their claims and obtained title to their land, making homesteading an important force in landownership in the West. One of the goals of the Center for Great Plains Studies is to make available data and other resources on homesteading to scholars and to provide an accurate and authentic narrative of the homesteading experience. To that end, Great Plains Quarterly is publishing invited and competitively selected papers covering new analyses of homesteading data, women homesteaders, and African American homesteading. The first of these papers, "The New Learning about Homesteading," appears in this issue. Other papers on homesteading will be published in subsequent issues over the next two years.