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One of the great realizations when looking at a sky full of stars is that the image falling on your eyes is from light-years in the past: you are looking at history. In North Dakota, where settlers homesteaded the first farms, descendants of the pioneers can look at history across their own front yard. Bruce Miller of Minneapolis spent summers on his aunt and uncle's farm driving a combine on what has become a huge wheat growing operation. Below he tells the story of the tiny house in their yard: "As you probably know, during the latter half of the 19th century the government was giving away 1/2-mile-square plots of land ('quarters') to any takers. My great grandparents immigrated from Norway just to take advantage of Uncle Sam's offer. One of the conditions was that you had to establish a home and live on the property within a certain period of time (you also had to build a barn and dig a well). The intention was to get settlers into the western territories (it worked). "Grandpa Moe staked his claim in north central North Dakota, and went back to live with relatives in Hillsboro, ND on the Minnesota border -- the edge of civilization at the time -- until he had sufficient funds to send for his future wife and set up shop on the new land. When his time was up (I think it was five years), he and Anna had to move to the new land or loose it. The young Norwegian couple that had claimed the adjoining quarter of land was in the same situation: the Jacobson's grace period was over, and they had to 'prove up' or loose their dream. "There was much to do the first year, and both couples were pushed to the limits of their time and finances. To satisfy the requirements of living on the land, the Jacobson's and the Moe's built a sod home that straddled the border of the two properties. That's where both couples lived throughout that first summer and through their first brutal North Dakota winter. After the crop was in the next spring, they built the house you see here and lived there for five to ten years, before building the yellow house in the background of one of the photos. (Picture 1, left) My aunt and uncle live in that house today."
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