The Cattle Trails
(By Emerson Hough in 1918, updated April 2024)
The study of history often relies on a chronological sequence of events and dates, a method that can sometimes obscure the broader context and deeper meaning behind historical developments. Instead of focusing solely on milestones in time, a more insightful approach seeks to understand the road itself – its origins, its purpose, and its ultimate destination. This perspective is particularly relevant when examining the vibrant, complex history of the Old West, where the true essence lies not in isolated events, but in the forces that shaped its evolution.
Beneath the surface of the Old West’s legendary tales of cowboys and frontier justice lay a robust and significant economic engine. While the stories of gunfights and outlaws captured the popular imagination, the real story was one of a large-scale, valuable industry driven by the vast herds of cattle that roamed the open ranges. The romanticized image of the West, with its "uproarious iniquity" and vivid characters, often overshadowed the steady, somber flood of commerce that fueled its growth.
Too often, the focus remains fixed on the picturesque aspects of the cowboy’s life, neglecting the immense scope of their domain, the magnitude of the responsibilities they bore, and the unwavering fortitude required for their daily existence. The American cowboy, a symbol of the West, represents a modern form of human industry with roots stretching back through time.
To grasp the true narrative of the West, it is crucial to consult contemporary accounts from those who lived it, as Julius Caesar advised: "Quorum pars magna fui" – "Of which I was a great part." By prioritizing firsthand experiences, we can move beyond the sensationalized stories and stereotypical characters of the "Wild West" and uncover the underlying causes that drove its settlement and development. We must look beyond the West as a playground or a scene of exaggerated human drama, and instead, consider its vital role in serving mankind. The explorers encountered a wilderness inhabited by Native Americans and buffalo. The driving forces behind its subsequent settlement and development are what truly deserve our attention. This article will analyze the historical relevance of the Cattle Trails.
Transportation stands as a pivotal agency in the unfolding of history, facilitating the movement of people, goods, and ideas. From the earliest methods of traversing waterways with hollowed logs to the development of sailing vessels, humanity has continuously sought to improve its means of transportation. In the early United States, commercial journeys from the head of the Ohio River to the mouth of the Mississippi River were undertaken using flatboats, with keelboats employed for the return trip. The use of poles, cordelle ropes, paddles, and sails enabled navigation of the vast waterways leading into the West. The subsequent arrival of the railroads, with their ability to span waterways and mountain ranges, revolutionized transportation and accelerated westward expansion. The Cattle Trails were essential for the economy in that era.
Following the Civil War, the expansion of the railroads across the northern range brought a crucial market to the cattle country. This development spurred cattlemen in the lower range to drive their herds northward to reach the railroads, transforming their livestock into a valuable commodity. These northbound drives represent a remarkable pastoral phenomenon, unprecedented in the world’s history. The Cattle Trails became synonymous with the Old West.
With limited market access in the South, cattlemen were compelled to drive their herds to distant markets on foot. This necessitated the creation of the Cattle Trails northward by cattle handlers intimately familiar with the wilderness of the lower range. These cowmen, with their distinctive customs and traditions, were often observed and documented by newly arrived "pilgrims," as they were known, who came west by rail.
The Long Trail, the primary route of the great cattle drives, holds immense historical significance and continues to captivate our interest. A description of the Long Trail, written some 20 years ago, remains the most fitting and evocative depiction of this crucial pathway.
Like a vast rope connecting the cattle country of the South with the North, the Long Trail was formed by the braiding together of numerous smaller pathways. Stretching for over two thousand miles, it ran along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, sometimes nestled close to the mountains’ base and at other times extending hundreds of miles across the tablelands or prairies. The Cattle Trails were a crucial element of the old western landscape.
The Long Trail traversed the expansive land of Texas, wound through the Indian Nations, and extended across Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana. Its wide, overlapping circles reached as far west as Utah and Nevada, as far east as Missouri, Iowa, and even Illinois, and as far north as the British possessions.
Even today, the Long Trail’s former course can be traced, beginning in the southern reaches of Mexico. It remains distinct across Texas and multifold in the Indian lands. The many intermingling paths still scar the surface of the Neutral Strip, and the plows have not completely erased the old furrows in the plains of Kansas. Visible remnants of the trail can still be found in the mountain lands of the far North, along the Stillwater Valley, the Yellowstone River, and toward the source of the Missouri River. The hoof marks extend beyond the Musselshell, over the Bad Lands, coulees, and flat prairies, and far into the northern territories, offering a glimpse into the unparalleled pathway of the Long Trail of the cattle range. History offers no other trail quite like it.
The Long Trail was surveyed and constructed with remarkable speed. Across the Red River of the South, vast processions of cattle appeared, seemingly without warning. These processions represented enormous wealth, owned by independent individuals and guarded by men who recognized no master. The origins and purpose of these cattle drives remained a mystery to many in the North and East, who viewed them as a sudden phenomenon. However, the answer lay in the underlying forces of civilization, dating back over a century. The Long Trail was completed rapidly, but its foundations were laid long before.
In the distant Southwest, in old Mexico, the first faint hoof prints of the Long Trail began to emerge, marking the path of a semi-nomadic movement along the line of least resistance.
As the Long Trail deepened and extended, it became associated with violence and bloodshed, a characteristic shared by few other pathways on the continent. The nomadic and warlike era gave way to a quieter, more pastoral time, marking the beginning of a feudal system on the range. This system, while rough, was nonetheless glorious, despite its origins in theft and violence. The flocks of these powerful individuals, often overlapping, grew rapidly. They were not immediately recognized as wealth, as the people could not consume a significant portion of the beef or use a hundredth of the leather. Over vast stretches of ownerless grasslands, by rivers and lagoons, the herds grew from tens to hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands, marking the dawn of the American cattle industry.
Small groups of the Southwestern herd began to appear in the Northern States. Texas cattle were driven to Illinois as early as 1857. An unsuccessful attempt was made to use Louisiana as an outlet in 1861. In 1867, a drover ventured to take a herd across the Indian Nations, bound for California, but abandoned the project due to the presence of hostile Plains Indians in the north. Several herds were driven from Texas to Nevada in 1869. These were side trails of the main cattle road, indicating the need for transportation. The Civil War disrupted plans to market range cattle, leaving Texas grazing lands teeming with millions of cattle with no real value. The demand for a market became critical.
Meanwhile, Anglo-Saxon civilization was expanding rapidly westward, displacing the Native American populations. The railroads were pushing into the untracked empire, bringing the market with them. Though still hundreds of miles north of the great herd, the market halted, much nearer. The Long Trail no longer tapped at the doors of Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas but leaped north, crossing the Red River and reaching the railroads through well-defined channels deepened by the hoofs of more than a quarter of a million cattle in 1866 alone.
By 1871, over 600,000 cattle crossed the Red River for the northern markets. Abilene, Newton, Wichita, Ellsworth, Great Bend, and Dodge City, Kansas, flourished and sometimes descended into lawlessness.
This was how the men of the North first learned of the Long Trail and the men who made it, a trail that had begun long ago and was destined to grow.
By 1867 and 1868, the northern portions of the region immediately east of the Rocky Mountains had been sufficiently cleared of their wild inhabitants to allow for gradual settlement. It had been discovered that the buffalo grass and sweet waters of the far North could fatten cattle to a stature far exceeding what they could achieve in the South. The Long Trail pushed further north in search of "free grass" and a new market. The territorial ranges needed many thousands of cattle, which were supplied by the Texas drives to Abilene, Great Bend, and Fort Dodge. The government also needed thousands of beeves to feed its new Native American wards, which were driven from the southern range to the upper army posts and reservations. These government demands and the demands of the territorial stock ranges provided ample opportunity for the men who lived on the saddle.
The Long Trail, previously reaching the corn lands of Illinois and Missouri, now crowded westward to Utah and Nevada, penetrated every open park, mesa, and valley of Colorado, and found all the high plains of Wyoming.
Cheyenne and Laramie became common names, and drovers spoke of the dangers of the Platte River as they had previously spoken of the Red River or the Arkansas River. The Trail continued its push north, reaching the last of the five great transcontinental lines in the British provinces. Here, despite the long season of ice and snow, a percentage of the great herd could survive each year, struggling for existence under conditions drastically different from those at the opposite end of the wild roadway over which they had traveled.
The Long Trail of the Cattle Range was complete. The cattle industry had spread across the entire West, not transferred but extended. The trail of the old drive marks the line of that extension.
Today, the Long Trail has been replaced by other trails, a product of the rapid development of the West. It remains as a historical connection between two phases of an industry that, despite differences in climate and condition, retains essential similarities. The cowboy and his pony, whether driving the first herd into the corral at the Ultima Thule of the range or patrolling the modern range, remain the same, guarding and guiding the wild herds from the romantic past to the commonplace present of the West.
(By Emerson Hough, 1918. Compiled and edited by Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated April 2024.)
(Excerpted from the book The Passing of the Frontier, A Chronicle of the Old West, by Emerson Hough, Yale University Press, 1918. As it appears here, the text has been edited for clarity and ease for the modern reader. Emerson Hough (1857–1923) was an author and journalist who wrote factional accounts and historical novels of life in the American West. His works helped establish the Western as a popular genre in literature and motion pictures. For years, Hough wrote the feature “Out-of-Doors” for the Saturday Evening Post and contributed to other major magazines.)