10 THE DEVELOPMENT OF SHEEP RAISING 



sheep began early in the nineteenth century during the period of 

 mania for Merinos. Gradually flocks, mainly of Merino breeding, 

 spread over the fertile, virgin lands of the Ohio Valley and of the 

 Great Lakes region. When these lands became somewhat thickly 

 settled and high in price, many sheepmen, desiring to operate on a 

 large scale, moved farther west where range was cheap and extensive. 

 It was chiefly because of vast stretches of cheap range in the West 

 that certain of our sheepmen almost constantly kept on the march., 

 first over the Appalachians, then across the Mississippi, thence west 

 to the Rockies and southwest into Texas, and finally through all the 

 Rocky Mountain Region. 



Changes in Centers of Sheep Population Shown by Census 

 Reports. In 1840, as the census reports clearly show, the regions 

 of densest sheep population were Vermont, New Hampshire, and 

 New York. At that time there were no sheep in the far West except 

 those of the Navajo Indians in northern New Mexico. In fact, the 

 only state west of the Mississippi having sheep in considerable 

 numbers was Missouri. Ten years later that part of Ohio lying 

 south of Lake Erie was the region of densest sheep population. 

 There was a noticeable thinning out in New Hampshire, Vermont, 

 and New York, and a pronounced increase in southeastern Michigan, 

 and in all of Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois. Flocks 

 had also made their way into southern Wisconsin and southeastern 

 Iowa. The census of I860 shows sheep in eastern Texas and the 

 coast and central parts of California. Although the census report 

 of 1870 does not show much new territory occupied by sheep in the 

 Mississippi Valley and the far West, it does show, with a great deal 

 of significance a great increase in numbers in those regions and a 

 great decrease in such eastern states as New York, Vermont, and 

 New Hampshire. In 1880 southeastern Wisconsin, along with 

 southeastern Michigan and much of Ohio, were the regions of 

 densest sheep population. Such states as the Dakotas, Nebraska, 

 Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming, which ten years before were almost 

 unoccupied, now showed a liberal sprinkling of flocks. By 18'90 all 

 the western states and territories were occupied and by 1900 the 

 Rocky Mountain region had become the most important sheep 

 section of the country. The census of 1910 showed that 58.41 

 per cent of the sheep of the United States were in the West 

 (Figs. 5 and 6). 



