Buffalo and Beef: The Opening of the Texas Range Buffalo Hunters: Some of the first easterners to live and settle the prairies of the Big Country were the buffalo hunters. These men followed the great herds through the gaps in the Callahan Divide and skillfully took down massive numbers of buffalo a day. A skilled hunter, with enough skinners following him could kill 5,000 buffalo every two days. Over a four-year period at least 10,000 hunters slaughtered the vast majority of a herd that numbered in the millions. The teams of hunters and skinners skinned the buffalo and shipped the hide East, where manufacturers made the skin into anything from leather belts used to run agricultural equipment to buffalo robes. The demand was high and the profit margin was good. With the destruction of the buffalo, the Indians lost their way of life, but the range opened for massive herds of cattle and the cowboys who pushed them on to railheads.
The Rise of the Texas Cattle Industry: The buffalo’s demise and the steady increase of railheads in Kansas transformed the Western frontier economy. Texas divided ranching into four different regions: Gulf Coast, South Texas Plains, Panhandle and West Texas, and Big Bend. Western ranching thrived in the Llano Estacado, or Stacked Plains, sub-region. Cattlemen and cowboys profited by taming the Western Frontier. In West Texas, class divided cowboys and cattlemen; cowboys often had to prove their worth. Cowboys lived for the trail drives but often labored in the heat, repairing fences, digging wells, and doing other odd jobs around the ranches. Ranch hands earned up to $20-$25 per month, while the trail bosses earned $50-$60 per month. Often cowboys labored in multiethnic communities. Some historians estimate that up to onethird of cowboys were Hispanic or Black.
Barbed Wire: In the late 1870s, creation of barbed wire ended open grazing, which replaced fences made of board and rock. J.F. Glidden from Illinois invented barbed wire, but Texas put it to widespread use. John Gates created a cattle corral in San Antonio and began to promote Glidden’s invention in the West. The decline of the open range occurred in each of Texas’ four ranching sections at different times, forever changing the Texas terrain.
Fence Cutter Wars:
Rath and Wright Hide yard, Dodge City, Kansas. 40,,000 Buffalo hides ready to be shipped to markets in the East.
In 1883, small ranchers and farmers began to fight back against cotton farmers and larger ranches that started to fence in their herds to protect water resources. People refered to as“Nippers” cut barbed wire fences to recreate public access for water. These conflicts, which peaked during 1883-1884, led to the passage of a law requiring a five-year prison sentence for wire-cutting. The Texas legislature cemented the end of free range.