Cattle drives in the United States

In this period, 27 million cattle were driven from Texas to railheads in Kansas, for shipment to stockyards in St. Louis and points east, and direct to Chicago.

The long distances covered, the need for periodic rests by riders and animals, and the establishment of railheads led to the development of "cow towns" across the frontier.

While cattle could be driven as far as 25 miles (40 km) in a single day, they would lose so much weight that they would be hard to sell when they reached the end of the trail.

Small Spanish settlements in Texas derived much of their revenue from horses and cattle driven into Louisiana, though such trade was usually illegal.

For example, early 19th-century Pennsylvania cattle drovers travelled to Philadelphia on the Conestoga Road and Lancaster Pike, which ended near the present site of 30th Street Station.

Therefore, drovers took their herds up through the eastern edge of Kansas; but there, too, they met opposition from farmers, who induced their territorial legislature to pass a protective law in 1859.

Even the Australians began cattle drives to ports for shipment of beef to San Francisco and, after freezing methods were developed, all the way to Britain.

In 1853 the Italian aristocrat Leonetto Cipriani [fr] undertook a drive from St. Louis to San Francisco along the California Trail; he returned to Europe in 1855 with large profits.

In October, 1862 a Union naval patrol on the southern Mississippi River captured 1,500 head of Longhorns which had been destined for Confederate military posts in Louisiana.

The permanent loss of the main cattle supply after the Union gained control of the Mississippi River in 1863 was a serious blow to the Confederate Army.

It ran through present-day Oklahoma, which then was Indian Territory, but there were relatively few conflicts with Native Americans, who usually allowed cattle herds to pass through for a toll of ten cents a head.

[18] The Chisholm Trail was the most important route for cattle drives leading north from the vicinity of Ft. Worth, Texas, across Indian Territory (Oklahoma) to the railhead at Abilene.

In 1867 a young Illinois livestock dealer, Joseph G. McCoy, built market facilities at Abilene, Kansas, at the terminus of Chisholm Trail.

The new route to the west of the Shawnee soon began carrying the bulk of the Texas herds, leaving the earlier trail to dwindle for a few years and expire.

[2] The Chisholm Trail decreased in importance after 1871 when, as a result of the westward advance of settlement, Abilene lost its preeminence as a shipping point for Texas cattle.

Other towns in Kansas, including Wichita and Dodge City, succeeded Abilene or shared its patronage by riders fresh off the long trail.

Communities in other states, including Ogallala, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Miles City, Montana; and Medora, North Dakota, served the trade as well.

Amarillo, Fort Worth, and Wichita Falls, all in Texas; Prescott, Arizona, Greeley, Colorado, and Las Vegas, New Mexico were regionally important.

Later, however, continued overgrazing, combined with drought and the exceptionally severe winter of 1886–1887 wiped out much of the open range cattle business in Montana and the upper Great Plains.

Following these events, ranchers began to use barbed wire to enclose their ranches and protect their own grazing lands from intrusions by others' animals.

However, railroads had expanded to cover most of the nation, and meat packing plants were built closer to major ranching areas, making long cattle drives to the railheads unnecessary.

High-crowned cowboy hat, high-heeled boots, leather chaps, pistol, rifle, lariat, and spurs were functional and necessary in the field, and fascinating on the movie screen.

Increasingly the public identified the cowboy with courage and devotion to duty, for he tended cattle wherever he had to go, whether in bogs of quicksand; swift, flooding rivers; or seemingly inaccessible brush.

Theodore Roosevelt conceptualized the herder as a stage of civilization distinct from the sedentary farmer—a classic theme well expressed in the 1944 Broadway hit "Oklahoma!

"—Roosevelt argued that the manhood typified by the cowboy—and outdoor activity and sports generally—was essential if American men were to avoid the softness and rot produced by an easy life in the city.

It described a fictional drive of the Circle Dot herd from Texas to Montana in 1882, and became a leading source on cowboy life; historians retraced his path in the 1960s, confirming his basic accuracy.

In the 1958 film Cowboy, Glenn Ford stars as a hard-living trail boss with Jack Lemmon as a citified "tenderfoot" who joins the drive.

The 1980s miniseries Lonesome Dove, based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name, centered on a cattle drive from South Texas to Montana.