Homestead National Monument of America  Homestead National Monument of America, a unit of the National Park System, commemorates passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed any qualified person to claim up to of federally owned land in exchange for five years of residence and the cultivation and improvement of the property. The Act eventually transferred from public to private ownership. The national monument is five miles west of Beatrice, Gage County, Nebraska on a site that includes some of the first acres successfully claimed under the Homestead Act. The national monument was first included in the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966 (ID 66000115). The Homestead Heritage Center, dedicated in 2007, contains exhibits that treat the effect of the Homestead Act on immigration, agriculture, native tribes, the tallgrass prairie ecosystem, and federal land policy. The roof line of the center resembles a "single bottom plow moving through the sod," and the parking lot measures exactly . A separate Education Center features science and social science presentations that can be shared with classrooms anywhere in the United States through distance-learning. The park includes of tallgrass prairie restored to approximate the ecosystem that once covered the central plains of the United States—and that was nearly plowed into extinction by the homesteaders. This restoration, which necessitates regular mowing, haying, and prescribed burns, has been managed by the National Park Service for more than 60 years and is the oldest in the National Park System. The park maintains about of hiking trails through the prairie and the woodland surrounding Cub Creek, accessible via all-terrain wheelchair. In 1867, George W. Palmer built the Palmer-Epard Cabin from mixed hardwoods about 14 miles northeast of the Monument. It measures 14 x 16 feet and is representative of the local construction style. Palmer lived in the cabin with his wife and 10 children. Between 1875 and 1880, a 10 x 12 foot lean-to was added to the rear of the cabin, and the Palmers continued to live in it until 1895, when it was sold to nephews Eugene Mumford and William Foreman. A few years later, the farm was sold to Lawrence and Ida Mumford Epard, who lived in the cabin for nearly 40 years. The cabin was donated to the park in 1950 and has been moved and restored several times in intervening years. The Freeman School, built of foot-thick red brick with carved limestone lintels, was the longest continuously used one-room school in Nebraska (1872–1967).