In 1974, a Vietnam veteran moved to Alaska for a new life. 14 years later, he became the last person in US history to get a homestead patent

For most people, moving to Alaska in the 1970s might have meant looking for a job or starting over in a new place. For Kenneth Deardorff, a Vietnam veteran from California, it turned into something much bigger. He went to Alaska after college hoping to find work, but instead decided to build a life on a remote piece of land and became the last person in US history to receive a title under the Homestead Act.

Deardorff filed his homestead claim in 1974 on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. Records from the National Park Service identify him as the last person to obtain a title to homesteaded property in the United States.

From California to a remote Alaskan homestead

Deardorff was born near Los Angeles and later served in the US Army during the Vietnam War, where he was wounded. After returning home, he completed college with a degree in geography and then travelled to Alaska looking for work, including possible opportunities with the US Geological Survey.


Once he arrived, though, his plans changed. He went to the Bureau of Land Management office in Anchorage to ask about homesteading and eventually selected land along the Stony River.

There is a slight difference in the historical records over the size of the original claim. The National Park Service describes it as an 80-acre claim in one of its detailed records, while another NPS page describes 50 acres. The National Archives records the final patent as covering 80 acres.

Life without roads, regular mail or easy access

Living there was not a simple matter of owning a piece of land. The homestead was deep in the Alaskan interior, around 200 miles west of Anchorage, and there were no roads reaching it. Deardorff had to depend on a plane, boat or his own ability to travel through the wilderness.

Mail was also infrequent, and collecting it could mean travelling to another village. To make a living, he ran a small general store for people travelling along the Stony River and also hunted and trapped furs. He worked the land and developed the property much like earlier generations of homesteaders had done.

One unusual part of that work involved a 1945 Allis-Chalmers tractor. Deardorff had the machine flown into the area in pieces and used it to clear land for farming, including pulling out hundreds of tree stumps.

He qualified in 1979, but waited nine more years

Deardorff completed the legal requirements for his homestead in 1979. Yet the government did not issue his final patent until May 5, 1988, nearly nine years later. The National Archives identifies that document as the final homestead awarded under the Homestead Act.

The timing made the case especially unusual. Congress had repealed the Homestead Act in 1976, although a provision allowed homesteading to continue in Alaska until 1986. By the time Deardorff finally received his patent, the homesteading era had already ended.

In 2001, research by the National Park Service confirmed that Deardorff was indeed the final person to receive title to land claimed under the Homestead Act. His story therefore became the closing chapter of a system that had shaped American settlement for more than a century.