CHEYENNE TODAY: THE UNION PACIFIC Depot.

CHEYENNE: STOCK GROWERS' NATIONAL BANK IN CENTER

CROSSING A HERD: POWDER RIVER

COLIN J. MACkenzie.

JAMES SHEPHERD

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THIRD FROM LEFT: SENATOR WARREN; FOURTH, N. K. BOSWELL;

FIFTH (IN FRONT) THEODORE Roosevelt

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INTRODUCTION

HE story of the range cattle industry on the western plains of the United States constitutes one of the most remarkable chapters in the annals of any people. Broadly speaking, it begins with the state of Texas and continues well down into the twentieth century. The mild climate, abundant pasturage, and land system of Texas all combined to make it ideally fitted for the ranching industry. As a result in 1860, with a population of only about 600,000, it had around three million head of cattle.

The Civil War, which began the following year, greatly reduced the number of cattle in almost every state, both of the North and South. Even in 1870, after five years of peace in which to rebuild the stocks of cattle, census figures show that nearly every state had far fewer than in 1860, and some had hardly half as many. Only in Texas, which of all states of the Confederacy had been least touched by the ravages of war, had the number of cattle actually greatly increased during the years of conflict. In consequence the Texas soldiers returned from the war to find their ranges overflowing with mature, fat cattle that were steadily increasing in numbers.

Unfortunately the animals had almost no value. Stock cattle were offered for sale at three or four dollars a head and fat steers at around twice that, but there were no buyers. Yet, at this time, beef was selling in the northern cities at twenty to thirty-five cents a pound, and fat beeves were quoted at ten to twelve dollars a hundred pounds on the New York and Philadelphia markets and at half or more of that price in Chicago.

Out of this situation grew the so-called "Northern Drives." Beginning in 1866 large herds of fat steers were

assembled by the Texas ranchmen and started north in a desperate attempt to reach markets. The stream of cattle poured north during the next two or three years, eventually becoming a vast torrent which it is estimated amounted to 600,000 head in 1871. The number then declined slightly, but for the next fifteen years was seldom less than a quarter of a million annually and was often far more.

The earlier herds usually consisted of fat, mature steers that were driven to some point in Kansas or Nebraska on the railroads that were being pushed westward across the plains. Here they were loaded on cars and shipped to Kansas City or some other packing center for slaughter. Later the destruction of the buffalo and the placing of Indians upon reservations opened the ranges of the central and northern plains to ranching, and most Texas herds were made up of young steers. These were sold to be matured and fattened on newly established ranches in that region. Within less than twenty years after the close of the Civil War, cattle had been spread out over the rich pasture lands of all the plains states and territories.

So came into existence that great pastoral empire called the "Cow Country" which had, for the economic basis, cattle and the native pasturage on which they fed. By 1885 it stretched from Canada to Mexico and from the western edge of crop-growing settlements in Eastern Kansas and Nebraska to the Rocky Mountains and far beyond into the states of the Great Basin and even those bordering on the Pacific Ocean. By that date it had nearly reached the zenith of its importance and soon began to decline.

By 1880 an enthusiasm for ranching, amounting almost to a craze, had swept over America and even extended to Europe. United States Senators, Supreme Court Judges, Eastern bankers, lawyers, and merchants were among those with a financial interest in the range cattle business. Young men just out of college, of whom Theodore Roosevelt is a conspicuous example, came to the West for a fling at ranch