Big Die-Up

Many ranchers were bankrupted as a result and the era of the open range in which cattle roamed unfenced on the plains began its decline.

The near-extinction of the bison by hunters and the defeat of the Comanche, Lakota, Cheyenne and other tribes of Indians after the American Civil War (1861-1865) opened up the last large acreages of land for cattle ranching on the Great Plains from the Canadian border on the north to the Texas panhandle in the south.

Cattle drifted with the seasons and sought out good grazing until rounded up by cowboys and herded to railroad terminals from where they were transported to eastern markets.

The winter of 1886-1887 had a wider impact with the Big Die-up killing hundreds of thousands of cattle and bankrupting many ranchers on both the northern and southern plains.

The severe winter of 1880-1881 caused many cattle in Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska to migrate southward in search of shelter and good grazing.

[11] In 1883, With the Texas panhandle already crowded with cattle, ranchers leased 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km2) of land in Indian Territory from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.

On January 6, 1886, the United States Army Signal Corps, the predecessor of the National Weather Service, issued a warning of a cold wave descending onto the southern plains.

Heavy winds piled up snow two to three feet (.5 to 1.0 mts) deep in the Texas panhandle and New Mexico, closing roads for up to one month.

[16] The winter weather even reached the West Coast, with snowfall of 3.7 inches in downtown San Francisco setting an all-time record on February 5, 1887.

[17] A chinook wind melted the snow in early March and ranchers began to assess the impact of the winter on their cattle.

In a letter to his friend Henry Cabot Lodge, Roosevelt remarked "Well, we have had a perfect smashup all through the cattle country of the northwest.

[18] Despite the losses and the poor condition of the grasslands, the plains recovered quickly—aided by the reduction in the number of cattle and favorable weather during the remainder of 1887 and 1888.

They built fences to enclose their herds and improved the quality of their cattle by introducing new breeds and providing them shelter, forage, and water rather than allowing them to roam freely.