Photo of the Day

It is the summer of 1865.

Texas ranchers are returning home from fighting in the Civil War.

And they are learning the old ways of cattle ranching are gone forever.

Their enslaved labor, which had tended the herds before the war, has left.

And their cattle have scattered across the open range.

The market for beef has changed, too.

Markets in the South have collapsed — people are broke —

but demand for beef in the North is surging.

These changes have brought an opportunity, for ranchers who could adapt,

to get back on their feet.

They realized that, if they could round up their cattle and get them north,

to rail-heads in Kansas, Colorado and Missouri,

their herds could be put on trains to stockyards

in St. Louis and Chicago and other points east.

And big money would come rolling in,

making the hardships of such a venture worthwhile.

So, the ranchers hired young men who were good on a horse to do this work

— war veterans, teenage boys, Mexican men and freed Blacks.

Left: Photo caption: 'Coaly, the boy who could ride and rope anything that had four feet and wore hair.' Greer County, TX (now OK), c. 1870. Between 6,000 and 9,000 cowboys were Black men. Right: Nat 'Deadwood Dick' Love, wearing 'my fighting clothes,' c. 1907.

About 35,000 men in all.

These are the men who became the cowboys of American legend.

The cowboys would work in groups of ten on long cattle drives,

moving herds of about 3,000 animals fifteen miles a day.

They’d work in shifts so the cattle could be watched ‘round the clock.

And they’d travel with a cook and a man to tend the spare horses.

They’d give the cattle time to graze at mid-day and at night

so they’d maintain a marketable body weight once they arrived at the stockyard.

The cowboy era ended around 1900,

when barbed wire became widely available

and people began using it to fence off their land.

It wasn’t a smooth transition at first.

Putting up barbed wire on the Milton farm at El Indio, Texas

Ranchers fought the introduction of barbed wire, sometimes cutting the fences of their neighbors.

They objected to the denial of their use of free and open natural resources they had grown accustomed to.

A ranch near Marfa, Texas, 1939.

But farmers were insistent.

They wanted to keep stray cattle from trampling their crops and barbed wire was perfect for this purpose.

And, in time, even the ranchers realized that barbed wire could protect their ranch land from encroaching farmers and other ranchers.

So, it was the end of the cattle drive through the open range.

But, while it lasted, about 27 million cattle trekked north from Texas ranches.

“Rawhide” TV show (1959-1965). Tom Mix comic book, 1940s.

And their stories from the trail lived on in print, film, radio and television.

“The Lone Ranger” (1949-1957).

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda