My 1892 Mint Set
Private
Updated:
2/4/2026
Views: 30
Here is an image from 1892 of homesteaders in Nebraska. In 1892 you could buy 160 acres of land from the government for just about $10. The problem with Nebraska and Kansas and the eastern stretches of Colorado and Wyoming was there were no trees. If you were going to build something, it would have to be from what was available. In Nebraska that was sod, in eastern Kansas there was lime stone, old brown lime stone. Even today much of the fencing in Western Kansas' smaller farms and ranches is done on century old lime stone fence posts. The image to the left is a homestead in Nebraska in 1892 where lime stone was not available, only sod.
This time in America was known as the "Guilded Age." The guilded age was one of immense poverty and most of the wealth and income in the hands of a very few. The Statistical Abstract of the United States put the mean household income for the bottom third of the population at about $400 a year, and the poverty level at just over $600. As bad as this homestead in Nebraska looks it was considered a safety valve for the eastern cities which were much worse for the majority of their inhabinants.
In 1890 in South Dakota there was a massacre of Lakota speaking people by the U.S. Army. It was pretty much the end of the wars against the Plains Indians and the homesteaders were relatively safe from the Plains Indians from then on. One should not forget the past, it's not WOKE or fake news, it is part of who were are and how our country was formed. Positive lessons can and should be taken from these experiences so that we don't go down that rabbit hole again. Today is December 29, 2025 exactly 135 years from the day of the massacre at Wounded Knee; it should be a day of national reflection -- we are a great and good people, in the main, and capable of such self examination.
We don't need to make American great again, it always has been. Ronald Reagan's shining city on hill, won by long years of suffering, survival of intolerance, and open warfare. Those homesteaders, not some would be politican, and the Lakota at Wounded Knee paid the price for our greatness and we must never let somebody with little grace and even less understanding try to convince us otherwise.
Everytime I look at an American coin, I remember those of my ancestors who suffered for me to have a better life. This is a Fort in South Dakota that bears my last name, there is an Airplane in the Smithsonian that was my uncle's during World War II, and my wife is an immigrant, a very smart one who can never go home again -- and she thanks providence for these United States every day, as I do for her entering my life. Coins, they are just the trappings of time, the lubricant of our economy, and now the things that keep me out of the bars and off the streets. My country is great, and don't have any idea whose country needs to return to greatness.
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