The Homestead Act granted land to individuals who were jonesing for getting a slice of the American West pie.

The Pacific Railway Act granted land to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads to build a transcontinental railway along the 32nd parallel. (Source)

That sounds easy enough, right?

Well, actually not.

Land became as valuable as gold, and competing interests fought like dogs over scraps of available or not so available pieces of earth. Not content with the nearly 128 million acres of land granted by the government between 1862 and 1872, the railroads and the doctrine of Eminent Domain—or the power vested in the railroads to co-opt land because they were working on a federal improvement project—ripped even more land from homesteaders.

Even if they weren’t on the track per se, the railroads still had the power to set bumpers to the track (ten square miles per mile of track) and take more land than strictly necessary. (And then turn around and sell it, because they were greedy dirtbags.)

Of course, if the land was already occupied, owners were meant to be compensated…but whether that was fairly or not is another story. (See what we mean about the greedy dirtbag part?)

How could this happen when there were meant to be records of these things, you ask? Well, not only did it take until 1869 for the railroad to be finished, but also homesteaders popped up all over the place and there was poor communication between Land Office outposts. (The railroad was also working on bringing the telegraph to the West.) The Union Pacific was working west while the Central Pacific was working east, so progress varied, making it difficult to keep track (pun totally intended) of where things were or were going.

Basically, 1863 onward was a free-for-all in trying to nail down land.