Historian Tom Hitzroth looks at the Land act of 1820 which came about as the result of a declaration of peace between Great Britain and France in 1815. Between the early 1870s and late 1890s early European Immigrants to Washington claimed land all over our region. Often, we refer to them as “homesteaders” today but, the term homesteader refers to only a specific group of people claiming land under a very specific legal rules. Join Eastside Heritage Center as this presentation explores the development of these land laws—from the Land Ordinance of 1785 that set up the public land survey system to the Homestead Act of 1862.