Kansas - The Glory Days

Abilene prospered as a cattle town from the start.  35,000 cattle passed through the town in 1867 - by 1877 the number had risen to 700,000.  The drive northward took a steady toll on men and animals by drownings in rivers, ambushes, and disease.  As the ranchers drove their herds northward, the cattle seemed to thrive on Kansas grass.  Was it really necessary to go so far north when Kansas offered all that was needed - abundant grass, water, and empty land.  Why endure the dangers and expense of driving cattle further north?

As the extension of the railroads grew, cattle towns sprang up to the south and west - Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City.  Each town enjoyed a central role in the cattle business for a time.  Most of Kansas, however, was too fertile and too well-watered to be left to cattle ranchers.

By the 1870s, the farming frontier was taking over cattle land.  Backed by the state legislature, the region was deemed best for homesteading instead of ranching.  More and more of Kansas was declared off limits to the herds.  The herds trampled crops and spread the dreaded disease of "Texas fever."

By the 1880s nearly all of Kansas was closed to the cattle drives.  The Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe Railroads now crossed Texas and the cattlemen no longer needed Kansas.  Cattle country itself had expanded far to the north and west.  Railroads made ranching possible in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.  The Texas longhorns were no longer the king of the range, being replaced by mixed breeds more adaptable, more desirable and more profitable.

Next time... The Wicked Cattle Towns
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Today in Pioneer History: "On July 10, 1889,  in a drunken rage, “Buckskin” Frank Leslie murders his lover, the Tombstone prostitute Blonde Mollie Williams.  Leslie was an ill-tempered and violent man, especially when he drank. He sometimes claimed he had been trained in medicine and pharmacy, and he even boasted that he had studied in Europe. Supposedly, he earned the nickname “Buckskin” while working as an Army Scout in the Plains Indian Wars.