HISTORY120 - American Cattle Drives

I ask family and friends to propose topics for my blog.  The subject of this blog article was suggested by my financial advisor, who I hereby thank.  As usual, I do a little up-front research to determine if there Is something for me to learn, and in this case, there was plenty.  So, this article will be on the history of American cattle drives.

 After a short introduction, I will cover the history of cattle drives, starting with Spanish activity before there was an America, then covering early American cattle drives before the Civil War, next concentrating on the peak era of cattle drives after the Civil War, then how those cattle drives worked, i.e., how they were accomplished, then the demise of long-distance cattle drives in the late 19^th century, next modern cattle drives extending into the 21^st century, and finishing with some conclusions and the legacy of cattle drives.

As usual I will list my principal sources at the end.

Introduction     

In the latter half of the 19^th century, the open plains of the American West became the backdrop for one of the most iconic chapters in our history: the historic cattle drives.  At its peak, in the three decades following the Civil War, the movement of cattle from Texas ranches to northern markets fueled economic growth.  These long journeys brought over ten million cattle from the ranges of Texas to northern railroad hubs, or "cow towns," to meet the high demand for beef.  Cattle drives also shaped settlement patterns and forged the cowboy into a symbol of rugged independence.  Yet, beneath the romantic image lay grueling work, countless dangers, and a logistical feat that defined the era.

Early Cattle Drives (1830s to 1865)

Texas has had many lives.  Texas was first a Native American land; then from the mid-16^th century, a Spanish territory; next a Mexican territory, when Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821; then an independent nation (Republic of Texas) in 1836; until finally becoming U.S. state in 1845.

The tradition of driving cattle has roots in Spanish culture.  As Spanish-controlled land expanded northward from Mexico, the Spanish built a series of missions all throughout their holdings in the future American Southwest, including Texas.  These missions were more-or-less self-sufficient communities.  Part of what made their self-sufficiency possible were the herds of cattle they often kept.  As time went on, many of the Spanish cattle escaped the missions in Texas, and began living a feral existence in the Texas brush.  The feral cattle flourished in the mild climate, and as time went on more and more lived free from man’s management.  By the mid-1800s, there were many feral cattle in Texas along with the managed herds.  It was Texas’ massive surplus of cattle that made it the place from which the cattle drives would emerge.

The Texas Longhorn descended from Spanish cattle that were first brought to the Americas in the late 15^th century.  Over hundreds of years, the breed evolved on the open rangelands of northern Mexico and Texas.  The Texas Longhorn is characterized by its long horns, which can span more than 8 feet from tip to tip.  They have a higher tolerance of heat and drought than most European breeds.  The coat can be of any color or mix of colors; in some 40% of the cattle, it is some shade of red, often a light red.

Texas Longhorns moving across a grassy field.

 

Early American cattle drives began after Texas became an independent nation.  In 1836, ranchers in Texas began to drive cattle along a "Beef Trail" from Stephen F. Austin's colony eastward through treacherous swamp country to New Orleans, where animals fetched twice their Texas market value. 

After Texas statehood, in the 1840s, cattle drives expanded northward into Missouri along the Shawnee Trail from Austin, Texas to Sedalia, Missouri.  (The Trail was likely named for the Shawnee Hills region in Indian Territory, modern-day Oklahoma).  The towns of Sedalia, Springfield, and Baxter Springs became principal markets. 

The Shawnee Trail was the earliest and easternmost route on which Texas Longhorn cattle were driven to the north.

 

The Shawnee Trail was first a major trade and emigrant route from the populated American East to Texas across Indian Territory (later Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri).  The long 700-mile “plus” Shawnee Trail was the earliest and easternmost route on which Texas Longhorn cattle were taken to the north, carrying thousands of longhorns.  The Shawnee Trail played a significant role in the history of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas in the early and mid-1800s.

But by 1853, as cattle were trailed through western Missouri, local farmers blocked their passage and forced herds to turn back because the Longhorns carried ticks that carried Texas fever.  Texas cattle were immune to this disease; but the ticks that they left behind infected the local cattle.  By 1855 farmers in western and central Missouri formed vigilance committees, stopped some of the herds, killed any Texas cattle that entered their counties.  An 1855 law banned diseased cattle from being brought into or through the state.  Drovers then 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.

The gold rush to California created substantial demand for beef, and during the early to mid-1850s, some adventurous Texans herded steers westward through rugged mountains and deserts to West Coast mining camps, where animals worth fourteen dollars in Texas marketed for $100 or more. 

In the early years of the American Civil War, Texans drove cattle into the Confederate states for the use of the Confederate Army.  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.

Some Texans drove cattle to New Orleans, where they were sold, but, mostly, animals were left untended at home, where they multiplied.

The war blocked access to eastern markets.  During the Civil War, the Shawnee Trail was virtually unused.  Texas cattle numbers grew significantly in that period, and after the war could not be sold for more than $2 a head in Texas.  By 1866, an estimated 200,000 to 260,000 surplus cattle were available and could be sold to northern markets for as much as $40 per head, making it potentially profitable for cattle, particularly from Texas, to be herded long distances to market.

Peak Era for Cattle Drives (1866-1890)

The peak era of cattle drives emerged in the years after the Civil War.  Demand for beef soared in northern states.  Texas, with its abundance of cattle, became the starting point for massive drives.  Drives that would push thousands of head at a time, north to railroad connections in Kansas, Nebraska, and even Wyoming Territory.  The railroads connected ranchers to markets in the East.

By 1860, the railroad reached points as far west as Sedalia, Missouri.  After the Civil War, railroad construction roared back into full swing.  As the railroads marched further west, cattlemen capitalized on the new technology.  They realized they didn’t need to drive their cattle all the way to the eastern markets; they just needed to get them to the railroads.  From there, they could be shipped anywhere track was laid.

Trails like the Sedalia and Baxter Springs Trail (formerly known as the Shawnee Trail), Goodnight-Loving Trail, the Chisholm Trail, and the Western Trail became vital arteries for transporting livestock.  In fact, between 1866 and the early 1880s, millions of head of cattle moved north on trails that approached 1,000 miles distance, depending on the starting point in Texas.  At the same time, towns like Abilene, Elsworth, and Dodge City in Kansas; Ogallala, Nebraska; and Cheyenne, Wyoming sprang up as hubs of trade and commerce - building saloons, stockyards, and rail depots.

The major cattle driving trails from Texas to the north, between 1866 and 1890.

 

Cattle owners made these railroad connection towns headquarters for buying and selling.  Cowboys, after months of monotonous work, dull food, and abstinence of all kinds, were paid off and turned loose. They howled, got shaved and shorn, bought new clothes and gear. They drank "white mule" straight.  Madams and gambling hall operators flourished in towns that were wide open twenty-four hours a day.  Violence and ebullient spirits called forth a kind of "peace officer" that cattle towns made famous - the town marshal.  James Butler Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson were among the best-known cattle town marshals.

 

Front Street of the “cow town” of Dodge City, c. 1875.

Let’s look at some of this history in greater detail.  When the Civil War ended, Texas possessed between three million and six million head of cattle, many of them wild unbranded mavericks worth locally as little as two dollars each.  However, the same beasts were potentially far more valuable elsewhere, especially in the North, which had been largely denuded of its livestock by wartime demand, and where longhorns commanded forty dollars or more a head. 

In the spring of 1866, Texas cattlemen mounted large trail drives, totaling more than 260,000 cattle, to assorted markets.  Some went eastward to Louisiana, where many animals were shipped by boat to Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri. 

That same year, veteran cattleman Oliver Loving and his young partner Charles Goodnight drove a herd of cattle westward through dangerous Indian country to New Mexico and sold them profitably at Fort Sumner, New Mexico and at Denver, thereby inaugurating the famed Goodnight-Loving Trail. 

Yet the vast majority of Texans who drove cattle to market in 1866 followed the familiar and safer Sedalia and Baxter Springs Trail through Indian Territory, either to Kansas City or to Sedalia, Missouri, both of which possessed railroad facilities for shipment eastward, especially to meatpackers in Chicago. Illinois. 

While many drovers found profitable markets and sold cattle for as much as sixty dollars a head, others encountered armed, hostile farmers, especially in Missouri, where new outbreaks of Texas fever engendered much anger.  A number of states, including Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky, either barred or severely restricted the trailing of Texas cattle across their borders.  The restrictions included fines up to $1,000, and in some areas, herds were either impounded or killed.

Postwar cattle trailing might have ended had not Illinois cattle buyer Joseph G. McCoy established a railroad connection away from settled areas.  Selecting Abilene, Kansas, near the center of the mostly uninhabited Great Plains - then a veritable sea of grass - McCoy enticed Kansas Pacific Railroad executives to provide sidings and other facilities and even to pay him a commission on each carload of cattle it shipped from Abilene.  He also persuaded Kansas officials not to enforce the state's quarantine law at Abilene, in order to attract trail herds. 

Joseph G. McCoy reinvigorated Texas cattle trailing by establishing a new railroad town in Abilene, Texas.

 

The route from Texas to Abilene became known as the Chisholm Trail, named for Jesse Chisholm who marked out the route.  Later, other trails forked off to different railheads, including those at Dodge City and Wichita, Kansas.  Between the end of the Civil War and 1873, more than 1.5 million Texas cattle were driven over the Chisholm to Abilene, as well as to Wichita and Ellsworth, rival Kansas cattle towns along the trail.  During that period, Abilene was the principal railhead-market for Texas cattle.

By about 1876, most northern cattle drives had shifted westward.  By then much of the eastern trail in Texas traversed settled country, and farmers strenuously objected to cattle being driven through their fields.  And, after 1873, Texas herds capable of carrying Texas fever were kept out of Abilene, Ellsworth, and Wichita.

Looking for an alternate route and market, in 1874 contract drover John Lytle blazed the Western Trail to Dodge City.  Thereafter, until Kansas and other northern states and territories totally quarantined themselves against Texas fever in 1885, the trail to Dodge was the principal thoroughfare over which up to 6 million Texas cattle were moved to market. 

Some cattlemen extended the Goodnight & Loving Trail westward and northward into Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and South Dakota.  Others extended the Western Trail northward into the Dakotas and Montana.  But by 1885, the Western Trail had been blocked in innumerable places with barbed wire fences, legally erected and not, both in Texas and north of the Red River in Oklahoma. 

With the movement of cattle thus greatly impeded by quarantines and barbed wire, Texas cattlemen increasingly shifted to railroads that had reached Texas in the 1880s to transport their animals to market.

How Cattle Drives Worked

A successful cattle drive required meticulous planning. 

Before a drive began, cattle had to be gathered in a process known as the roundup.  This annual event brought ranchers and cowboys together to identify, sort, and brand cattle.  Roundups were a mix of chaos and precision, requiring sharp eyes to identify markings and steady hands to rope strays.  Roundups also became social occasions, where ranchers exchanged news and cowboys tested their skills.  For many, it was a moment of camaraderie before the grueling months on the trail began.

Roundup and branding had to be accomplished before starting the drive, c. 1880.

Cattle drives primarily took place in the spring and continued through the summer and early fall, ending before the cold weather of late fall and winter set in.  Drives began after spring roundups, as soon as there was sufficient grass for the cattle and the conditions were favorable for travel.  This timing allowed herds to reach northern railheads for sale before the arrival of harsh northern winters. 

Drives generally took from 3 to 5 months and were massive undertakings.  A drive covered 15 to 25 miles per day; the cattle had to be allowed to graze to maintain their weight.  Due to the long duration and high risk, investors tried to move as many cattle north as they could at a time.  Although estimates vary in regards to the number of cattle on a drive, many sources indicate drives of 2,000 - 4,000 as being very common.

Managing the cattle across hundreds of miles of open country demanded skill and strategy.  A typical crew consisted of a trail boss, a cook, a horse wrangler (to take charge of the spare horses), and 10 to 12 cowboys, each allocated three horses to allow for constant work by rotating animals, and to handle the strenuous demands of herding thousands of cattle.  Flank riders kept the herd moving.  Cowboys worked in shifts to watch the cattle 24 hours a day, herding them in the proper direction in the daytime and watching them at night to prevent stampedes and deter theft.

The cook drove a chuck wagon, usually pulled by oxen.  The cook was a particularly well-respected member of the crew, as not only was he in charge of the food, he also was in charge of medical supplies, and had a working knowledge of practical medicine.

Here is where the American cowboy was born. The cowboys who rode the trails were as varied as the herds they tended. Many were young, often teenagers, and came from diverse backgrounds, including African American freedmen, Mexican vaqueros, and European immigrants.  Although portrayed as a romantic life, the reality was long days in the saddle, little to no sleep, dangerous storms, bad cattle, bucking horses, swollen rivers, bad food - all for only $30-$40 a month.  Their days were long and filled with hard labor, but they also forged bonds over campfires, where songs and stories provided a brief respite.

 

Cowboys working to keep the herd in line.

The trails themselves were rife with obstacles.  Rivers like the Red River and the Brazos River had to be crossed, often at great peril to both cattle and men. Dry stretches of land presented the challenge of scouting for water sources.  Storms and stampedes could scatter herds, undoing weeks of progress.  Cowboys also had to contend with searing heat, sudden thunderstorms, freezing nights, prairie fires, and monotony.

Other challenges were equally daunting.  Outlaws targeted cattle drives, knowing the value of a herd.  Ranchers also faced tensions with settlers whose crops risked being trampled by passing herds. Relationships with Native American tribes varied; some drives paid for safe passage through tribal lands, while others led to conflict.

Demise of Long-Distance Cattle Drives  

By the mid-1880s, the era of long-distance cattle drives began to wane.  Railroads pushed further into Texas, reducing the need for long drives.  Tick fever continued to cause quarantines, making it difficult to move cattle across state lines.  By 1893, Oklahoma was opened to settlement, and soon barbed wire fences crisscrossed the West, making drives impossible.  Finally, harsh winters in the late 1880s, particularly the “Big Die-Up” of 1886-87, decimated herds, forcing many ranchers to adapt or abandon the trade altogether.

Modern Cattle Drives (1890 - Present)

In the 1890s, herds were still occasionally driven from the Panhandle of Texas to Montana.  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.  (From the 1870s, dressed beef from meatpacking plants reached markets via refrigerated railway cars.)

Smaller cattle drives continued at least into the 1940s, as ranchers, prior to the development of the modern cattle truck, still needed to herd cattle to local railheads for transport to stockyards and packing plants.

In 1969, spearheaded by attorney Roslyn Chasan, the Great Western Land & Cattle Co. led the last overland cattle drive - with hundreds of cattle, from Bluewater, New Mexico to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, a distance of 192 miles.

Today, cattle drives are primarily used to round up cattle within the boundaries of a ranch and to move them from one pasture to another, a process that generally lasts at most a few days. 

Because of the significance of the cattle drive in American history, some working ranches have turned their seasonal drives into tourist events, inviting guests in a manner akin to a guest ranch to participate in moving the cattle from one feeding ground to the next.  While horses are still used in many places, particularly where there is rough or mountainous terrain, all-terrain vehicles are also used. When cattle are required to move longer distances, they are shipped via truck.

Most cattle were being hauled by truck by the 1970s.

 

Conclusions    

Economically, cattle drives fostered modern ranching practices, linked regional markets, and shaped the growth of towns and trade hubs.  Cattle drives helped establish the beef industry as a cornerstone of American agriculture.  Ranching expanded as settlers moved west, drawn by the promise of open land and thriving markets.  The historic cattle drives also influenced settlement patterns, as railroads extended their reach and towns sprang up along cattle routes.

Culturally, cattle drives were foundational in shaping the rugged identity of the frontier, contributing to narratives of adventure, exploration, and the spirit of making a living in the American West.  

Cattle drives also cemented the cowboy as an enduring icon of resilience and independence.  Long hours, unpredictable weather, and constant dangers forged a sense of camaraderie and grit that became synonymous with the American West.  The cowboy became a global icon of the American West and a symbol of resilience and independence.  Iconic cowboy paraphernalia includes the cowboy hat, cowboy boots, denim jeans, and western shirts with pearl snaps, which are functional symbols of Western wear. Other important gear includes the bandana, belt buckles, and chaps, along with tools like the lasso used for ranch work.  

The cow pony is also an enduring icon of ranching and cattle drives.  The cow pony is a small, quick, and agile horse specifically bred and trained for herding cattle, known for its powerful hindquarters, sturdy legs, and a compact build.  These horses possess natural instincts for working with livestock, have strong stamina, and are often developed from early Spanish stock, with the Quarter Horse being a prime example of a modern cow pony bred for its ability to work cattle. 

 

The cowboy and cow pony became global icons of the American West.

Today, the Texas Longhorn is also considered a part of the cultural heritage of Texas.

The enduring imagery of cattle drives and roundups continues to shape popular culture, from classic Western films to contemporary celebrations of cowboy heritage at rodeos and historical reenactments.  Elements of the cowboy lifestyle, including films, fashion and music, continue to resonate in literature, film, and folklore today.

 

Cattle drives were foundational in shaping the rugged identity of the frontier, contributing to narratives of adventure, exploration, and the spirit of making a living in the American West.

 

Sources

My principal sources include: “Cattle Drives in the United States,” Wikipedia.com; “History of Cattle Drives and the Creation of an American Hero.” frontierlife.net; “The History of Cattle Trailing in the American West,” tshaonline.org; “Cattle Drives,” texasalmanac.com; “Historic Cattle Drives and Roundups: The Epic Journey of the American Cowboy,: cowboyaccountant.com; plus, numerous other online sources, including answers to queries using Google in AI Mode.