page_title: Cattle drives in the United States
section_title: End of the open range
hierarchical_section_title: Cattle drives in the United States / End of the open range
caption_attribution_description: English: Winter herding increased the challenging tasks and risks for moving cattle to long distances. Français&#160;: L'élevage d'hiver a augmenté les tâches et les risques difficiles pour transfère le bétail aux distances longues.
context_page_description: Cattle drives were a major economic activity in the 19th and early 20th century American West, particularly between 1850s and 1910s. In this period, 27 million cattle were driven from Texas to railheads in Kansas, for shipment to stockyards in Louisiana and points east. The long distances covered, the need for periodic rests by riders and animals, and the establishment of railheads led to the development of "cow towns" across the frontier.
  Due to the extensive treatment of cattle drives in fiction and film, the horse has become the worldwide iconic image of the American West, where cattle drives still occur.
context_section_description: 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 Mountains and Dakotas. In 1866, Nelson Story used the Bozeman Trail to successfully drive about 1000 head of Longhorn 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 (4 million hectares) spread across four states and two Canadian Provinces, and shipped 10,000 head annually to the Union Stock Yards in Chicago.
  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.
caption: Winter herding increased the challenging tasks and risks for moving cattle long distances.
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