Texas Cattle Drives

By the end of the Civil War severe meat shortages led to new strategies by Texas cattle suppliers. The most dramatic solution was the cattle drive, whereby cowboys in South Texas collected enormous herds of wild and range cattle ("mavericks") and drove them north to markets and railroads in Kansas. Although the heyday of the cattle drive only lasted about a dozen years, its influence persists to this day in popular myth.

Descendants of Andalusian and Castilian breeds brought to the New World by the Spaniards, the Texas Longhorns roamed freely over the Texas and Mexico grasslands, numbering in the millions by the time of the first cattle drives in the late 1860s. Cowboys would roam these unfenced plains, gathering herds for the long trip to the Kansas markets. Along the way lay many hazards: hostile Apaches and Comanches, thieves, treacherous rivers and inclement weather, as well as the normal hardships of life on the range.

The Chisholm Trail was one of the most famous of the cattle drive routes. It led through San Antonio and Austin and north to Fort Worth, the last "civilized" stop before the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. In Cowtown, the cowboys refreshed themselves against the rigors of the trail in the city's numerous saloons and brothels. As the herds thundered down Commerce Street, townsfolk knew to stay off the streets. In 1870, 300,000 cattle were driven from Texas to Kansas.

By the late 1870s the railroad was pushing south and west, eventually making the cattle drive obsolete. Yet, along the Chisholm Trail and particularly in Fort Worth, its legacy lives on at sites such as the Stockyards and Sundance Square.