Startin' Up the Ranch

Before the days of the great cattle barons, there was little distinction between a cowhand and a rancher.  Many men were both.  When a would-be rancher was just starting out, he often hired himself out for a season or two to earn money to start a herd.  Once he had enough money for 30 head, he could look for a piece of land in Texas, Arizona, Wyoming or Montana.  Land itself was cheap, even free under the Homestead Act.  Most cattlemen didn't bother with legalities, they just squatted and let their cattle take over the surrounding acres.

Early years for a rancher were rough, waiting for the cattle to fatten and multiply.  The rancher worked alone, no money to hire help, so he rode around his lands keeping watch on his herd.  His home might be a dugout, a buffalo-hide tent, a wagon or a crudely built cabin.  But if he was wise, an initial investment of $100 could turn into $700 in just two years.  Profits went back into the business for the first years until he could build a proper house and hire a few cowhands.

Even when a rancher could hire cowhands, he still continued to work the ranch alongside the men, riding along the edge of unfenced lands.  He participated in the twice yearly round-up, where strayed cattle were rounded-up and new calves were branded.

Reginald Aldridge, visited a ranch in the Texas Panhandle and wrote an accurate description of the layout of a ranch in the late 1800s:  "it was considered the most comfortable in the Panhandle.  There was a good five-room house where the proprietor lived together with his foreman and a woman who cooked.  A little distance there was a smaller house, containing a kitchen and a dining room, and beyond was a picket house where the men slept, one room fitted up as a blacksmith's forge and another as a saddle-room.  There were besides a milk house, a store-room for provisions, a vegetable garden, a small horse pasture and a field of rye.  The owner claimed to have about 2,600 head of cattle."

Next time..."It's a Cowboy's Life
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Today in Pioneer History: "On July 30, 1619, in Jamestown, Virginia, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World–the House of Burgesses–convenes in the choir of the town’s church.