Expanding Cattle Drives

There is an invisible line, roughly to the 100th meridian, cutting through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, where the grasses grow higher on the eastern side and shorter on the western side.  The soil is rich and the world's most productive agricultural region lies within its borders.  The rainfall is drops west of the line, but the calcium-rich soil is perfect for grazing animals.  Known as the Great American Desert with bitterly cold winters and hot, arid summers - it was here the cattle empire had a brief dominion and the cowboy culture reigned.

Captain Richard Grant began wintering cattle on the open range in Utah in 1850.  His thriving trade exchanged fresh cattle for the trail-weary herds of western migrants at a hefty profit.  In 1864-5  E.S. Newman found himself snowbound with a supply train on the Laramie Plains in Wyoming.  He drove off  his oxen to fend for themselves, certain they would die of starvation while he hunkered down to wait out the winter.  Spring came, and Newman found the animals alive and healthy, having found food under the snow to eat.

Charles Goodnight and his partner, Oliver Loring in the spring of 1866, gathered a herd of 2000 head of long horns, and began the drive to New Mexico, following the old Butterfield Overland Mail route discovering an 80 mile stretch of it without any water at all.

One trail hand recorded what he experienced during this drive: "Another day of sizzling.  The cattle became feverish, unmanageable.  The lead cattle turned back, wandering aimlessly...congregated into a mass...milling and lowing in their fever and thirst.  We did everything to try to stop them - threw ropes in their faces, shot them, but they walked so sullenly toward the line of horsemen we realized  the herd was going blind.  After three days we reached the Pecos waters.  More than 100 cattle died in the stampede to the water." 

Goodnight and Loving were paid $12,000 in gold for their remaining herd.  Loving died before being able to take advantage of the new western grasslands, but Goodnight established an immense ranch with orchards and cornfields in Colorado in 1868.  He became one of the first cattlemen in Colorado.

Next time...the Texas Panhandle
_______________________________
Today in Pioneer History: "On July 23, 1878, wearing a flour sack over his head, Black Bart robs another Well Fargo stage coach and steals the small safe box with less than $400 and a passenger’s diamond ring and watch. When the empty box was recovered, a taunting poem signed “Black Bart” was found inside: "Here I lay me down to sleep to wait the coming morrow, Perhaps success, perhaps defeat. And everlasting sorrow, Yet come what will, I’ll try it once, My conditions can’t be worse, And if there’s money in that box,’Tis money in my purse." This wasn’t the first time that Black Bart had robbed a stagecoach and left a poem for the police; however, it was the last time he got away with it.