The poster presents a geospatial database and dynamic web mapping project on homesteaders in the US West from 1863 to 1912. Mapping statistics on land claims (and their success and failure) at the level of local land districts in combination with complaints by unsuccessful claimants as well as military and congressional reports on squatting on Indian land, the project aims to create a birds eye view of the Homestead Act with a particular focus on the law’s accessibility to people of color and it’s entanglement with Indian displacement. The poster discusses the project’s overall aims, its current status, as well as conceptual and technical challenges.