260 PROFITABLE STOCK RAISING 



Wyoming and Montana. Heavy, pure-bred Short- 

 horn and Hereford bulls were imported from the 

 East and from Europe in large numbers, and used 

 in grading up these herds, using the Texas stock 

 as the original foundation. There was gradually 

 evolved a very fair type of beef animals upon the 

 western and northwestern ranges. 



The days of the great Texas cattle trail were soon 

 ended. This was due to the influx of farmers who 

 worked their way across the West in Nebraska and 

 Kansas, but it served its purpose, and established 

 the great herds of the western cattle barons, whose 

 halcyon days were in the late '7o's and up to about 

 1890. 



HOW CATTLE WERE SHIPPED 



The building of the western railroads furnished 

 means for shipping the stock East, and stimulated, 

 to a great extent, the population of all the range 

 by cattlemen. Cattle raising on the magnificent 

 scale where one company or outfit owned anything 

 up to half a million head of cattle, continued until 

 late in the '8o's and early 'QO'S, when the gradual 

 western advance of the farmers, with its conse- 

 quent fencing of the country, caused a breaking up 

 of the old bonanza cattle outfits. This movement 

 reached western Nebraska in about 1889, and three 

 years following saw the same inroads being made 

 in the great herds of the mountain states. In those 

 sections which did not attract the farmers, the 

 small cattleman began to obtain a foothold, and 

 to operate with relatively smaller holdings within 

 the formerly acknowledged range of the cattle 

 kings. 



The range sheep industry became prominent 

 about this time also, and its encroachment upon 



