Cattle Trails as a Factor in the Development of Livestock Marketing

Abstract

Cattle droving has played a very important part in the development of American livestock marketing. Its history may conveniently be divided into the following three periods: (1) the Colonial and early national period up to about 1820, (2) the time of the Ohio droving from about 1820 to the Civil War, and (3) the heyday of the Texas cattle trails from the Civil War to the middle nineties, over which has been cast much glamour in song and story. This heyday is the first of the three chapters in the modern story of the cattleman in America. The first chapter, covering the cattle trail period, which is to be discussed in detail in this present article, is romantic, colorful, a-thrill with high adventure and stirring experience. The second chapter deals with a period devoid of high lights in its action, but blazing with financial glory at the end. The third chapter has for its subject a drab, distressful time, but one now finally coming under brighter skies. This whole modern story of the cattle industry covers six decades, or two generations. The valley of Virginia, the western highlands of the Carolinas, and parts of Georgia were the original cattle ranges of the eighteenth century. Cattle were concentrated at cowpens, which were rough, noisy, frontier settlements, often developing into towns like the later cow-towns of the Western ranges. Cattle from these regions were driven to Charleston, Norfolk, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. In like manner, cattle from the country surrounding markets like New York and Boston were driven in along well-defined routes. For example, Boston was the largest live cattle market in New England, getting most of its supplies after the War of Independence from New Hampshire and Vermont. A new era in American agricultural history opened after 1783, the most important feature of which was the agrarian migration and the shifting of the center of livestock raising to the Ohio Valley. However, the big consuming centers were