The Cost of Marketing Texas Cattle in the Old Trail Days

Abstract

The general nature of trail-driving from Texas to the north and northwest during the three decades following the close of the Civil War is fairly well known. In the absence of any other outlet to market, the cattle-men of Texas shortly after the close of the Civil War resorted to the practice of driving their herds overland to northern markets, to the government posts for the soldiers and the Indians, and to the vast virgin ranges of the great and newly opened northwest. The country was open; the grass was free; and the cattle literally ate their way to market. The first drives were made in 1867, to Baxter Springs, Kansas. The ventures were undertaken by individual cattlemen who were searching in despair for a market for the great surplus of cattle which had come into existence prior to and during the Civil War. The herds driven at first were relatively small, ordinarily only a few hundred head. The success which attended these first efforts however, constituted such a powerful stimulus toward expanded operations that the next few years saw a remarkable increase in the number of trail-drivers and in the size of the herds moved. Previous to 1870, the industry was chiefly in the hands of relatively small individual drovers who were also stockgrowers. The common practice was for a ranchman to take his own cattle and a few hundred, perhaps, for his neighbors. But shortly after 1870, large concerns appeared in the fieldpartnerships, syndicates, and even corporations. Numerous individual drovers, however, extended their operations to such an extent that they rivalled or surpassed those of the syndicates. Eastern capital became interested, and the drives were financed by the banks in a business-like manner. Operations ran into the millions of dollars. With steady increases in the size of the herds moved, it had become common by the middle of the decade 1870-1880, to collect and drive herds of 3,000 head and more. Three thou-