 By the end of Civil War, as many as five million longhorn cattle  Descendants of old Spanish stock, roamed wild in Texas  At first they were hunted only for their hides since there was no way to get them to markets in the East  With the building of the Transcontinental Railroads, it became possible to transport these cattle to the eastern market

 Men as wild and tough as the longhorns were hired to round-up and drive these ownerless Texas cattle on the “long drive”  The slow, dangerous journey to the stations  During the decades following the Civil War, over 40,000 men were employed to herd cattle in the West.  These “Cowboys” were usually in their twenties

 Black, White, Mexican, and Indian cowboys tended and protected the wild herds, while riding cowponies that were often only slightly less scrawny and wild than the longhorns  Contrary to the Hollywood film image, being a cowboy involved hard work, low pay, and constant exposure to the elements

 Cowboys came to that occupation for varied reasons ▪ Many were Civil War veterans ▪ While some were immigrants direct from Europe ▪ In the south, cattle raising and care of livestock was an occupation often designated to slaves. After the war, many young African-American men drifted west and used their knowledge of animal husbandry to get hired on as cowboys ▪ Indians were already living in the region and knew the country and how to survive ▪ Texas had a substantial population of Mexicans who had remained after Mexico lost Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California to the United States; hence the incorporation of Spanish terms such as rodeo, bronco, lasso, and corral into the cowboy vocabulary

 Building the Transcontinental Railroad had employed thousands of men, many of whom had no desire to return to the industrial centers of the East when construction was complete  Dangers encountered by the cowboys on these drives included attack by Indians, stampedes, disease, and accidents. With no medical treatment available, getting sick or being hurt often ended in death  Herds of 1,000 to 10,000 animals were driven over the vast open ranges of prairie. Altogether, 4,000,000 head of longhorn cattle were driven north from 1866 to 1888

 At the western stations, cattle were loaded onto railroad cars and shipped live to their destinations in the East.  Many of the animals died on the trip and the remainder lost weight, which reduced their value  In 1869, a Chicago meatpacker, G.H. Hammond, shipped beef slaughtered in Chicago to Boston in an air-cooled rail car

 Within a decade after Hammond’s air-cooled car, Gustavus Swift developed a true refrigerated car, which revolutionized the meatpacking business ▪ Now the cattle were transported to stockyards in Kansas City or Chicago where they were slaughtered, and the meat was shipped east under optimum conditions

 The end of the open range in the late 1880s spelled the end of the long drive  Railroads brought homesteaders and sheepherders to the plains ▪ Homesteaders plowed up the prairie and laced the plains with barbed wire, invented by Joseph Glidden in 1873 ▪ Cattle ranchers responded by fencing off huge tracts for their own use. Sometimes homesteaders “squatted” on land claimed by cattle ranchers, which caused fighting ▪ Conflicts between ranchers and homesteaders over land and water rights became commonplace

 The terrible winters of and followed by a decade of desert-dry, scorching summers killed thousands of cattle on the Texas ranges  As a final blow to the long drive, the Indians levied ever-higher charges on drives that crossed their land  To counter these developments, railroads branched from the main transcontinental lines into Texas and Oklahoma making it possible for cattle drovers to deliver their cattle to a local destination  All these factors combined to end the era of the long cattle drive by the mid-1880’s

 The occupation of cowboy became a permanent, stationary job rather than transient contract work  The dangers, excitement, and stories of the West remained as romantic folklore