2024-12-22T03:49:42-05:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/150146424/homesteading-in-america Alexander Walter 2019-07-16T19:40:00-04:00 >2019-07-18T14:36:26-04:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/c1/c15ee6d550bff4e0a2114d096e3f1267.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><em><p>It&rsquo;s also not hard to picture oneself as a homesteader. The land is not free but it is cheap&mdash;some of the cheapest in the United States. In many respects, a person could live here in this vast, empty space like the pioneers did on the Great Plains&mdash;except you&rsquo;d have a truck instead of a mule, and some solar panels, possibly even a cell-phone signal. And legal weed.</p></em><br /><br /><p>"The San Luis Valley, with its cheap land, was a sort of magnet for these off-&shy;gridders," writes Ted Conover in his fascinating long read for <em>Harper's Magazine</em> about homesteaders on the margins of America. "There were a few hundred of them in total. Nationwide there are probably several thousand people living off the grid. No authoritative numbers exist, but off-grid life seems to be growing, often in states with cheap land (Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri), sunshine and cheap land (Nevada, Arizona, Texas), and/or frontier appeal (Alaska, Idaho)."</p>