Why cattle ranching developed on the great plains

The same steer was worth thirty or forty dollars at the end of the trail. Texas was cattle rich, but the way to market was through storms, across swollen rivers, and into hostile Indian country. Within two decades more than five million head had been trailed to outside markets. In the late s, after the Indian menace ended in Texas, the cattle industry leap-frogged to fresh pasturage in the Davis Mountains and the Big Bend, and on the plains of west Texas.

Contrary to general views, the Texas cattle industry was not founded entirely on "free grass. O'Connor, Richard King, Mifflin Kenedy , and scores of other antebellum ranchers operated on their own land from the beginning.

Other cattlemen who wisely bought land after the Civil War while their neighbors were scorning it included Charles Goodnight, William T. Waggoner, C. Slaughter, S. Swenson, and William D. Early Anglo-American ranches generally consisted of a primitive headquarters surrounded by open range. In the earlier-settled part of Texas, ranchers owned the land on which their improvements were built, but as the frontier advanced, stockmen set up quarters without benefit of title or surveyor's lines.

When the real owner appeared, the squatter moved farther into the unsettled domain. Before the advent of barbed wire in , few stockmen acquired land on which to graze cattle. Their primary need was a favorable site from which to work cattle and to control the water, which in turn controlled the range.

Even foreign capitalists who invaded the range country in the cattle boom of the early s bought only enough watered land to hold the range. As markets could not absorb surplus Texas cattle, ranchers soon looked north to the unpopulated range that extended to the Canadian border and covered the entire Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains.

While sending mature steers to slaughter markets, they moved breeding stock into New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Dakota, Colorado, the Cherokee Outlet, and western Kansas and Nebraska to start new herds. Methods of handling cattle, range terminology, and range practices developed in Texas spread with the herds across the western part of the United States. The Panic of momentarily crippled the cattle industry, but beef recovered rapidly and zoomed into an unprecedented boom that peaked ten years later.

Pamphlets describing the "Beef Bonanza" flooded Great Britain, and English and Scottish money at the Matador, Rocking Chair , and other ranches competed with eastern capital in acquiring herds and range rights.

The industry had grown up as individual enterprise, usually managed by the owner; now the corporation entered the field with all the advantages of mobilized capital but with the disadvantages of nonresidence and hired managers.

By the end of the nineteenth century the transformation of ranching to the closed range was practically complete. Open-range drift fences were superseded by a complete enclosure of the ranch holdings. Railroads invaded ranch country, and corporations subdivided their holdings into smaller pastures for better range utilization, improved livestock management, and sale.

Panic and drought in brought hard times, but the men who owned their grass and were free of debt were doing business when the upward tide returned. During World War I the cattle and horse market boomed, but the decade of the s brought deflation and bankruptcies. The owner-operator who resisted the temptation to speculate came through safely. Price recovery from the slump was slow, however, and another setback followed the bursting of the stock-market bubble in Cattlemen and their financial backers were soon in deep water, and a desperate government, for the first time in history, extended aid to the cattle industry through agricultural credit agencies.

Although the help was of some benefit, prices continued downhill, droughts plagued the land, ranges were overstocked, and grass was scarce. In the government intervened with a desperate remedy—a program to buy and kill cattle to buoy a depressed market. As the government generally destroyed the culls—sick, crippled, and scrub cattle—many ranchers used the payments to upgrade their herds. After the slaughter, the rains came again and the range grassed over. In addition to slaughter markets and outlets in corn-belt feedlots, a new cattle range developed.

Farmers in the southern states suddenly saw cattle as a means of utilizing acreage taken out of cotton culture. Texas herds supplied much of the seed stock from East Texas to Georgia. By the s beef cattle had returned to the major farming regions. Although much of the industry was conducted as a range enterprise, stock farming with small herds increased and became soundly based on a crop-livestock system.

In addition, ranchers capitalized on newly available railroad lines to move longhorn steers that populated southern and western Texas. This meat was highly sought after in eastern markets, and the demand created not only wealthy ranchers but an era of cowboys and cattle drives that in many ways defines how we think of the West today. Although neither miners nor ranchers intended to remain permanently in the West, many individuals from both groups ultimately stayed and settled there, sometimes due to the success of their gamble, and other times due to their abject failure.

The allure of gold has long sent people on wild chases; in the American West, the possibility of quick riches was no different. The search for gold represented an opportunity far different from the slow plod that homesteading farmers faced.

In what became typical, a sudden disorderly rush of prospectors descended upon a new discovery site, followed by the arrival of those who hoped to benefit from the strike by preying off the newly rich. This latter group of camp followers included saloonkeepers, prostitutes, store owners, and criminals, who all arrived in droves. If the strike was significant in size, a town of some magnitude might establish itself, and some semblance of law and order might replace the vigilante justice that typically grew in the small and short-lived mining outposts.

To varying degrees, the original California Gold Rush repeated itself throughout Colorado and Nevada for the next two decades. In , Henry T. Comstock, a Canadian-born fur trapper, began gold mining in Nevada with other prospectors but then quickly found a blue-colored vein that proved to be the first significant silver discovery in the United States.

Subsequent mining in Arizona and Montana yielded copper, and, while it lacked the glamour of gold, these deposits created huge wealth for those who exploited them, particularly with the advent of copper wiring for the delivery of electricity and telegraph communication. The first gold prospectors in the s and s worked with easily portable tools that allowed anyone to follow their dream and strike it rich a.

By the s and s, however, individual efforts to locate precious metals were less successful. The lowest-hanging fruit had been picked, and now it required investment capital and machinery to dig mine shafts that could reach remaining ore.

With a much larger investment, miners needed a larger strike to be successful. This shift led to larger businesses underwriting mining operations, which eventually led to the development of greater urban stability and infrastructure. Denver, Colorado, was one of several cities that became permanent settlements, as businesses sought a stable environment to use as a base for their mining ventures.

For miners who had not yet struck it rich, this development was not a good one. They were now paid a daily or weekly wage to work underground in very dangerous conditions. They worked in shafts where the temperature could rise to above one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and where poor ventilation might lead to long-term lung disease. They coped with shaft fires, dynamite explosions, and frequent cave-ins.

By some historical accounts, close to eight thousand miners died on the frontier during this period, with over three times that number suffering crippling injuries. Some miners organized into unions and led strikes for better conditions, but these efforts were usually crushed by state militias. Eventually, as the ore dried up, most mining towns turned into ghost towns.

Even today, a visit through the American West shows old saloons and storefronts, abandoned as the residents moved on to their next shot at riches. The true lasting impact of the early mining efforts was the resulting desire of the U. As more Americans moved to the region to seek permanent settlement, as opposed to brief speculative ventures, they also sought the safety and support that government order could bring.

While the cattle industry lacked the romance of the Gold Rush, the role it played in western expansion should not be underestimated. The early roots of Texas ranching began with colonial conquest.

In , Christopher Columbus made his second voyage to the island of Hispaniola. He brought with him the first Spanish cattle and the precursors of the famed Texas longhorn. Through the 16th and 17th centuries, cattle ranching continued to spread north through Spanish Mexico and into the land now known as Texas.

The first cattle raising in Texas appeared in the Rio Grande Valley. By , there were several thousand cattle recorded in the El Paso region. The earliest ranches were those of Spanish missionaries.

By the midth century, these were joined by competing private ranches. V aqueros were the first cowhands on these early ranches. Most vaqueros were from lower castas — socio-racial classes used by the Spanish government — like mestizo of American Indian and Spanish ancestry , mulatto of Spanish and African ancestry , American Indian, or African.

They worked as independent contractors, owning their own horses, saddles, and ropes but remaining unbound to a hacienda or a patron unless they chose to be. The Spanish crown saw an opportunity in the growing number of cattle in the region. In , the crown imposed the contentious Fondo de Mestenos Mustang Tax on all unbranded cattle and horses.

Cattle drives out of Texas also began at this time, mostly to provide military rations of beef. Written records from suggest that cattle were driven to Louisiana to feed Spanish soldiers fighting against the British in the American Revolution.

The arrival of the cattle remains unconfirmed, but it would have been the first-ever drive out of Texas. The Mustang Tax was revoked in , and drives spread more rapidly to new markets.

As a result, there was a major decline in cattle by the turn of the century. This was made worse by the turmoil of the Mexican War of Independence beginning in By the end of the war in , the Spanish ranching economy had effectively dissolved. Over time, their eastern cattle bred with Spanish cattle and the Texas Longhorn was born.

By the s, settlers had blended eastern ranching techniques with those of their Spanish-Mexican predecessors. Cattle and beef were abundant in the Colony. Over the next decade, the upheaval of the Texas Revolution and Mexican-American War left large quantities of land and cattle abandoned by Mexican ranchers. American settlers began to spread into arid northern and western Texas, and the longhorn went with them.

When the United States annexed Texas in , it distributed public lands for railroads and settlement. This expanded new markets for Texas cattle.

Land was abundant and economic demand was growing. Ranching required open ranges, periodic roundups and cattle branding, and management of cattle on horseback.

Cowhands lived meagerly, splitting their time on the range and in small line shacks at the ranch. Over-land drives were most important of all. They were essential to moving large herds to markets across the South. The Texas longhorn was uniquely suited to this style of ranching. Lean and sturdy, it was self-sufficient on the range and could withstand long, hard drives. The domestic cattle economy was growing, too. With the expansion of railways in other parts of the country, cattle were gradually driven west to gold fields in California.

Drives also went north to Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa, where beef was packed and distributed to northeastern urban markets. The Shawnee Trail was essential to this first push north. The trail had been used for drives as early as the s and followed routes established by American Indians, traders, missionaries, military, and pioneer settlers for years. The trail passed from Austin through Waco and Dallas and north to St.

Louis and other Missouri cities. The s saw an outbreak of Spanish Fever, a deadly and highly contagious disease spread among cattle by ticks. Use of the Shawnee Trail slowly declined as a result of fears of the disease and because civil war the following decade. By the start of the Civil War in , the United States had developed a national demand for beef.

The country looked to Texas ranches to provide. Then, as now, the cycle was closely tied to the seasons and the grass that provided the main source of food for the cattle. The feeding of hay and grain supplements on contemporary ranches has only slightly altered the basic cycle. The annual sequence of events varies in timing and technique from Texas to Canada but is similar in purpose and structure throughout the region. During the coldest months of the year, cattle remain on those areas of the range that offer some protection from the elements.

This can include rolling topography close to the ranch that provides a natural barrier to wind and snow. This is also the time when supplemental feeding is most important, especially if heavy snow cover makes it difficult for cattle to graze. Cattle from backgrounding operations, where cattle are kept over winter, are marketed during the first three months of the year. Calving season can begin as early as the last week in January and continue until June.

This is frequently a time of round-the-clock work for ranchers when they ride close to the herd to watch for any cow that may have difficulty calving. If the cows are located at some distance from the base ranch, cowboys may be hired to help watch the herd on a daily basis and then return to their homes at night. When old enough, the calves are branded, vaccinated, and eartagged, and bull calves are castrated prior to trailing them to summer pasture around the middle of June when grasses are reaching their peak.

In early summer, the job of putting up hay for the winter begins in earnest, and, depending on the precipitation and the type of grass or legume, this work may continue well into the fall. In the fall, cattle are rounded up from the summer pasture and given necessary vaccinations, while calves are weaned.

In operations that do not background calves, steer calves weighing — pounds are shipped to market in early to mid-October.