All of which is not relevant to the situations today where someone moves in and if they are there more than a month, you’re out of luck.
Besides, even the pioneers knew that if someone built a house that someone had to have owned the land at one time. It would behoove them to find out whose it was before investing their lives in it just to have the true owner show up and claim it.
If you put that kind of work into it without making sure you had clear title to it, you are a fool.
Back in the pioneer days, it was not uncommon for the original home builder to abandon it in disgust, or get scalped by Indians, or just fall down a ravine somewhere. And there were no records unless the absentee filed a “government claim,” in which case he had to either work his claim or lose it to a more industrious person.