Cattle Ranchers

The Importance of the Railroad

First, it was with oxen, horses, and wagons. Slow, cumbersome, and vulnerable to attack, the first waves of American settlers packed up homes into these wagons and moved. However, the railroad and locomotive are the most influential technology in westward expansion. Invented in the early 1800s, rail lines remained condensed near urban populations. As the locomotive and rail industry was perfected and made more efficient, its influence on taking over the western territories became more appealing.

Only a few rail lines, including the Transcontinental railroad, had been laid by the 1860s in the west. However, rail companies began to change their focus from transporting people west to seeing economic exploitation of the western territories' resources as a means of making a profit. During the 1880s, forty thousand new railroad miles laid the foundation for economic profit for these rail companies. No industry benefited from and was transformed more by the railroad than cattle ranching.

History of Cattle Ranching in Texas

Cattle ranching in the Texas territory did not begin with the Americans. The Spanish imported longhorn cattle into the region in the 1600s, exploiting the large tracts of grazing land in northern Mexico. These cattle were tended by “vaqueros,” early ranchers who protected herds and guided them to usable pastures. By the 1700s, the tiny industry expanded into southern Texas.

Fig. 1 - A painting of a Vaquero roping cattle in the 1830s. Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Texas Cattle Ranchers in the 1800s

In south Texas, only a few million heads of cattle grazed on American ranches. Not enough to be profitably sold. In 1865, the railroad changed that. The Missouri Pacific Railroad reached Sedalia, Missouri, far enough west that Texas ranchers could move their herds to the city. In Sedalia, heads of cattle worth only a few dollars in Texas would be worth nearly ten times more, creating a strong economic incentive for ranchers to move their herds to market in Missouri. This incentive created the famous “Long Drive,” during which ranchers would hire cowboys to move their herd hundreds of miles north to railroad junctions stretching across the Great Plains.

Fig. 2- A photograph of cowboys herding cattle in 1899. Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The Rise and Collapse of the Cattle Market

As the industry expanded, the economics and social influence of cattle ranching and the “cowboy” became more significant. Neighboring ranchers usually formed associations and allowed herds to graze together, distinguished by individual cattle brands.

Twice a year, crews of cowboys rounded up the cattle. They separated the cows from the newborn calves in the spring and branded the new cattle. In the fall roundup, the cowboys separated the mature cattle to be driven to market. These roundups fortified the images of the cowboys in western life. But the roundup and open-range herding were short-lived because it was too successful.

The Collapse of Open Range Cattle Ranching

By the early 1880s, the profitability of beef raising lured scores of investors into the industry. National and international demand for beef kept rising, and ranchers and capital flowed into the Great Plains. Soon, cattle began to overrun the plains.

Fearing the depletion of the prairie and loss of control, ranchers began to fence in their pastures with barbed wire. Fences destroyed the open range and often provoked disputes between ranchers, farmers, and other herders.

In addition to fences, harsh winters in 1885 and 1886 blunted beef production as hundreds of thousands of cattle froze to death. Nevertheless, supplies of cattle surpassed demand, and prices tumbled. By the spring of 1887, cattle that sold for over $9 per hundred pounds a few years earlier only yielded $2.40 per hundred.¹

Open-range ranching had made beef a staple of the American diet and created new fortunes for investors, but soon its success could not keep pace with the changes. By the 1890s, well-organized businesses were taking over the cattle industry and applying new breeding and feeding methods. The cowboy became just another corporate wage earner. Most cattle ranchers now owned or leased the land they used.

The final group that ended the cattle rancher’s supremacy: Farmers. For the same reasons cattle expanded- railroads- so did the profitability of extensive agricultural lands in the west as grains could be shipped en mass back east. The expansion of farmland and Homesteaders soon began to curtail the growth of the ranching industry. The farming frontier expanded west. An agricultural transformation from Missouri to the Pacific started with social and political ramifications affecting the nation.