The Cattle Drive: How Texas Herds Walked North to Kansas Railheads

What is a cattle drive?

A cattle drive is the walking of cattle over a long distance to a railhead, a market or new range. The idea is far older than the American cowboy. Spanish settlers began driving herds north from Mexico in the 1540s, and long drives were traditional in Mexico, California and Texas. By 1836 Texas ranchers were driving cattle along a Beef Trail to New Orleans, according to the Wikiwand article on cattle drives in the United States.

Elsewhere the practice was shorter. Most routes outside the Southwest were short, such as Pennsylvania drovers heading to Philadelphia.

How the Texas trail drives began

The postwar numbers explain the rush. Texas cattle sold for no more than $2 a head after the Civil War, and 200,000 to 260,000 surplus cattle were available by 1866. In the North, with Philip Danforth Armour's Chicago meatpacking plant open since 1865, cattle sold for up to $40 a head.

The first big attempts hit a wall. In 1866 Texas ranchers tried to reach Sedalia, Missouri, the nearest railhead, but Kansas farmers blocked the drive and herds sold cheaply. Disease was the reason: Texas longhorns carried ticks that spread Texas fever, Missouri banned diseased cattle in 1855 and Kansas passed a similar law in 1859.

The Chisholm, Goodnight and Western trails

In 1867 Joseph G. McCoy opened cattle shipping facilities in Abilene, Kansas, and the town loaded over 36,000 head in its first year. The Goodnight-Loving Trail opened New Mexico and Colorado to Texas cattle the same year. The Chisholm Trail, named for Jesse Chisholm, ran through Indian Territory, where Native Americans usually let herds pass for a toll of ten cents a head.

One source cited in the Wikiwand article names four Texas trail systems used between 1846 and 1886: Shawnee, Goodnight, Eastern or Chisholm, and Western. The Chisholm Trail lost importance after 1871 and revived when the Santa Fe Railway reached Caldwell, Kansas, in 1880. The source gives its length as 520 miles in one place and 1,000 miles in another.

Crew, pace and daily life on the trail

Reports on herd size differ: a typical long drive averaged about 3,000 head in one section and 1,500 to 2,500 in another. The crew needed at least 10 cowboys with about three horses each, or 10 to 15 hands with five to ten horses each, depending on the account. There was a boss, often the owner, a horse wrangler in charge of the remuda, and a cook driving the chuck wagon.

Cattle could be pushed up to 25 miles a day, but they lost too much weight to sell well. The healthy pace was about 15 miles, and ten to twelve was a good day on the Chisholm Trail. A drive from home ranch to railhead could take about two months, and cowboys earned about $40 a month, paid when the herd was sold. The cook's work is covered in the American Chuck Wagon Association history.

The end of the long drive

Ranchers also drove north into Montana and the Dakotas. Conrad Kohrs peaked at 50,000 head and shipped 10,000 a year to Chicago's Union Stock Yards. Overgrazing, drought and the severe winter of 1886 to 1887 devastated the open-range business on the upper Plains, and barbed wire then marked the close of the open range. In the 1890s railroads expanded and packing plants moved closer to ranching areas, so long drives were no longer needed.

The EBSCO open range summary covers the range side of that decline. Smaller drives continued into the 1940s, before modern cattle trucks. In 1969 Roslyn Chasan and the Great Western Land and Cattle Co. led what the article calls the last overland drive, from Bluewater, New Mexico, to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. The 1989 Great Montana Centennial Cattle Drive covered 50 miles in six days with 2,800 cattle.

Where to read more

Andy Adams's The Log of a Cowboy (1903) depicts a fictional 1882 drive from Texas to Montana, and historians who retraced its route found it broadly accurate. For more on the working side, see the ranching section of farm.FM and a farm.FM story about trail drive cowboys.