Cloud Wars: Is 2017 the Year of the Cloud Land Grab? | @CloudExpo #AWS #Azure #Cloud

Next month will mark the 155th anniversary of a piece of legislation that President John F. Kennedy once described as “the single greatest stimulus to national development ever enacted.” It was the Homestead Act of 1862. By 1862 the United States had grown from approximately 500 million acres of land to almost 2 billion (with a B) acres, a majority of which was in the public domain. Under the act, over 1 billion acres were made available to settlers. An individual could obtain 160 acres of land. If they lived on, cultivated, and improved that land over a 5-year period, the land was theirs. This led to the explosive growth of the west in the United States. Many of the western territories worked hard to entice the settlers to their public lands. Increased population, cultivated land, resources, all increased the territories influence with the U.S. government and provided the path toward eventual statehood.

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