Texans began to round up these free roaming cattle to profit from the beef shortage and the willingness of meat-packing companies to pay ranchers high prices for their cattle. Also aiding the cattlemen was the fact that railroad companies were building their lines across the Plains, making it possible to transport cattle to eastern markets by rail.

Even though railroads were beginning to stretch across the plains, they had not yet reached Texas towns. Cowboys had to drive the cattle to railroad stations in towns that included Cheyenne, Wyoming; Pueblo, Colorado; Dodge City, Kansas; Abilene, Kansas; and Sedalia, Missouri. Their were four primary cattle trails; the Goodnight-Loving Trail, the Western Trail, the Chisholm Trail and the Shawnee Trail.

Map of Cattle Trails from Texas

Today, this period in history and the cattle drives has been presented with an Anglo perspective of the cowboy. In reality, the first cowboys were Mexican Vaqueros, who developed their skills on haciendas in the 1700s. Many of the cowboys in the Old West era of the 1800s were Tejanos, who used Mexican techniques of controlling cattle, horse-riding equipment and a vocabulary inherited from the original vaqueros of colonial Mexico. Other cowboys were African Americans, who had learned how to handle horses during their service in the Civil War. Later, when the cattle drives had ended, the cowboy became associated with rodeos and Wild West shows, resulting in a romanticized view of the cowboy lifestyle.

Trouble often occurred between farmers and ranchers as Texas became more settled. Their disagreement centered over the use of the open range or grass lands that belonged to the state. Farmers wanted to grow crops on the land, and ranchers wanted to allow their cattle to freely graze upon the open prairies. In addition, Midwestern politicians made it difficult for Texas cattlemen to bring their herds through their states because the Texas cattle often brought unwanted disease. 

Also, the range lands became fenced in with barbed wire, an invention of an Illinois man named Joseph Glidden. Farmers immediately began to use barbed wire because it was cheap, and it kept cattle from grazing their farm lands. In addition, ranchers used barbed wire to protect their grasslands from cattle being pushed on the trails, especially once the cattle market became a booming business. Finally, cattle drives became unnecessary when the railroad companies began to lay tracks across Texas, making it easy for cattlemen to ship their animals from Texas towns. By the end of the 1880s, the big cattle drives to the north were over.

Additional Resources

1. Who brought the first Longhorns to Texas? What happened to these animals?(7.6:A,B)
2. Why did Texans profit little from the cattle industry prior to the Civil War? How did this change after the Civil War?(7.6:A,B)
3. Why were cattle driven from Texas to towns in Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming?(7.6:A,B)
4. How are the facts about cowboys of the Old West and their lifestyle different that what is commonly shown today?
5. What invention allowed farmers and ranchers to cheaply fence in their land? How did this effect the cattle drives?(7.6:A,B;7.20:C)
6. What caused the end of the long cattle drives?(7.6:A,B)