Cattle Drives in The United States - End of The Open Range

End of The Open Range

Expansion of the cattle industry resulted in the need for additional open range. Thus many ranchers expanded into the northwest, where there were still large tracts of unsettled grassland. Texas cattle were herded north, into the Rocky Mountain west and the Dakotas. In 1866, Nelson Story used the Bozeman Trail to successfully drive about 1000 head of longhorn cattle into the Gallatin Valley of Montana. Individual cattle barons such as Conrad Kohrs built up significant ranches in the northern Rockies. In 1866, Kohrs purchased a ranch near Deer Lodge, Montana from former Canadian fur-trader Johnny Grant. At its peak, Kohrs owned 50,000 head of cattle, grazing on 10 million acres (40,000 km²), spread across four states and two Canadian Provinces and shipping 10,000 head of cattle annually to the Chicago stock yards.

Later, however, continued overgrazing, combined with drought and the exceptionally severe winter of 1886–1887 wiped out much of the open-range cattle business in Montana and the upper Great Plains. Following these events, ranchers began to use barbed wire to enclose their ranches and protect their own grazing lands from intrusions by others' animals.

In the 1890s, herds were still occasionally driven from the Panhandle of Texas to Montana. However, railroads had expanded to cover most of the nation, and meat packing plants were built closer to major ranching areas, making long cattle drives to the railheads unnecessary. Hence, the age of the open range was gone and the era of large cattle drives were over.