The End of an Era

The height of the beef boom only spanned three years, from 1882-1885, but millions of acres of western grassland were used for raising cattle which attracted huge investments from both the East and abroad.  It looked like the cattle boom would go on for a good many years.

Teddy Roosevelt saw it differently from his ranch in the Badlands of Dakota...
"The free, open air life of the ranchman, the pleasantest, healthiest life in American, is from it very nature ephemeral.  The broad and boundless prairies have already been bound and will soon become narrow.  It is scarcely a figure of speech to say that the tide of the white settlement has risen like a flood, and the cattlemen are but the spray from the crest of the wave, thrown far in advance, but soon to be overtaken.  The great fenceless ranches will be divided into corn lands, or else into small grazing farms where a few hundred head of stock are closely watched and cared for."

The open range was gradually closing off.  Back in the 1870s, two men from Illinois, Joseph Glidden and Jacob Haish, developed the barbed wire fence.  Prior to that, fencing the cattle lands had been impractical due to the lack of wood over vast distances.  Some ranchers saw the new barbed wire fence as a dangerous thing - the new farmers would fence in land and fence out cattle.  Once the idea caught on, a frenzy of fencing began.  Miles and miles of land was fenced.  Whole counties were fenced in.  Then public domain began to be fenced in.

Letters of protest poured into Washington about the fencing of public domain.  The federal government could only offer moral support, telling farmers that they would be in their rights to cut the fences that barred access to public domain, but they offered no protection to anyone who did it.
Night raiding farmers armed with wire clippers began cutting holes in rancher's fences, and cowhands likewise destroyed farmer's fences.  Blood was shed.  Finally in 1865, Congress passed a law that forbade fences on public domain and all who did so went to jail.

Next time...Other reasons for the cattle boom decline
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On August 23, 1814, first lady Dolley Madison saves a portrait of George Washington, from being looted by British troops during the war of 1812.