Footprints in the Desert – Jackrabbit Homesteaders
Melissa Branson Stedman was born July 21, 1891, in Texas. In 1920 she married Edward J. Stedman, but they were divorced in 1940. Melissa was a public schoolteacher in Los Angeles, where she resided. She may have had a side occupation as a writer for various magazines because she wrote about her homesteading experiences for Desert Magazine and said she became “infected” with the idea of homesteading while researching and writing an article about Boulder Dam for a British magazine. In 1940, after her divorce, she began her quest to acquire a homestead in the desert somewhere in the Morongo Basin. She died in 1971 at the age of 79. The following are her very colorful accounts of her homesteading adventures as they appeared in Desert Magazine in 1945 and 1949.
Jack Rabbit Homesteader
Land hunger has reached epidemic proportions in these United States. It has broken out like a contagious rash in recent months in Southern California, where hordes of people with a back-to-the-land yearning, swooped down on the U.S. Land Office in Los Angeles in a mad rush for five-acre desert homesteads, anywhere, just so it is earth under foot and space to breathe. Applicants file for any blank space on the map regardless of whether or not it is on a high hilltop, in a dry wash, or the side of a precipitous mountain.
This writer became infected with the malady in its most virulent form in the early 30s while preparing an article on Boulder Dam for a British magazine. I read that California desert land would be opened for homesteading to war veterans in 1939, and to the general public in 1940; so, I patiently sweated it out until that time period. Then to the land office I went for a desert homestead.
I found that the homesteads were for five acres only and were recreation tracts near the Joshua Tree National Monument. They were really not homesteads in the true sense, but were leases of five acres, for five years, at five dollars a year. A five-dollar filing fee was required, and the lease carried a requirement of $300.00 in improvements within the five years as a condition for renewing the lease, or to buying the land in case the government decided to sell.
The purchase part of the deal was only a vague promise by an office clerk in the land office but was good enough for me. I did what nearly everyone else bitten by the land bug does. I made a hasty filing on a blank space on the map for five acres located somewhere near Twentynine Palms, California.
This leap, then look, method proved awkward, for after filing I went to see my land, and what I saw, I did not like. The acreage was in a sandy wash, infested with lizards, beetles and every manner of thing that creeps or crawls. With friends I camped out in the moonlight, anticipating a gorgeous sleep under the stars. But the heat was oppressive, and the bugs were too friendly. They crawled under the covers and kept me awake. I spent a long uncomfortable night with those creeping things of the desert wiggling around inside my pajamas. But I was not discouraged. Somewhere on the desert I would find what I wanted.
Later in the day, we drove into Morongo Valley. The heat was less intense, and while we had left the Joshua trees behind, the landscape was green with yucca and agave and greasewood. I liked this valley and so I hunted up a local “expert” to help me locate the public lands in that area. Finally, we found just what I wanted—nice flat land near the highway, with plenty of vegetation. Back to Los Angeles I went and put in a request to change my original filing to the new location. It was the perfect site for the desert cabin I had dreamed about.
The government sent its engineers out there to put in the corner markers—and the legal description in my possession, and corner stakes to mark the plot, I went out again to take possession of my new rancho. It was a mile away from the site my expert friend had shown me. It was in a boulder-strewn arroyo where there wasn’t enough level ground for a pigeon-roost. I walked miles and miles over the section seeking another location. Then with a compass and a ruler I carefully measured off the distance, figured out the descriptions, and went back to try again at the Land Office. By this time I was feeling a little bit sheepish about asking for still another change of location, but the Land Office was understanding and helpful. I relinquished the claim I held and filed again on the new one. This time I knew that I had what I wanted.