THE ENDURING FRONTIER: JOSEPH AND ERCELL FLOOD AND HOMESTEADING IN POSTWAR IDAHO, 1941-1956

This essay argues that the frontier, if defined as the availability of free land, was in fact not closed in 1890 as proclaimed by the famous Turner thesis. Furthermore, this paper reinforces historian Brian Q. Cannon’s work, which argues that the federal homestead program did not end in the 1930s—as many prominent western historians assert—but rather, in 1976 in the lower 48 states and 1986 in Alaska. To strengthen these claims, this essay uses the agricultural experiences of Joe and Ercell Flood as a case study of those who took advantage of the post-World War II homestead law which allowed veterans to farm on newly-expanded reclamation projects throughout the West. Using materials obtained from family sources which include oral histories, government documents, videos, and memoirs, as well as information from newspaper archives, federal statutes, and magazine archives, this essay looks at the Flood family’s undertakings from 1941—the United States’ entrance into World War II—to 1956—the attainment of a land patent to their farm on the Minidoka Project in Idaho. This paper provides an original contribution to the field of history for three reasons: (1) the postwar homesteading topic is limited to Cannon’s book as the only published work; (2) this essay is unique from Cannon’s monograph in that he did not interview or use sources from Joe and Ercell Flood; and (3) this thesis includes a children’s perspective on the postwar homestead experience, which Cannon’s work does not. Thus, the homesteading experiences of Joe and Ercell Flood provide an account of the enduring frontier, by which the prospects of new settlement did not vanish as lands became available to farm.