In the fifteen years between 1905 and 1920, thousands of people moved to Southeast Oregon claiming free public land through the Homestead Act. This wave of migration was spurred to the West by optimism, a few years of unusually wet weather, and high grain prices during the First World War. Most of these settlers lived in and around tiny hamlets with little more than a primary school and post office. Unusual for the time, around one in six of these dry-farm homesteaders were young, single women who struck out west to claim farms of their own.

Ultimately, very few homestead farms survived the return of drought and frost to the desert. Those that remained prospered mainly from access to federal construction projects like highways and canals. The rest moved away, looking for work in mills and cities, while others simply stopped trying to farm and turned to ranching instead.

Franklin Schroeder gives boys the "last watermelon of the season" at Dead Ox Flat in 1939. Large image of "Franklin Schroeder and the older boys in the yard" courtesy of Library of Congress​.

Ray Halstead changes a flat tire at Dead Ox Flat in 1941. Large image of Mr. Ray Halstead courtesy of Library of Congress​.