Backcountry GhostsCalifornia is an infamously tough place to be poor: home to about half of the entire nations homeless population, burdened by staggering home prices and unsustainable rental rates, California is a state in crisis. But it wasnt always that way, as prize winning historian Josh Sides reveals in Backcountry Ghosts. In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, the most ambitious and sweeping social policy in the history of the United States.