A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



entitled "The Long Trail" in The Story of the Here- 

 fords evidently encountered the same diffculty, be- 

 cause he used no dates, and Andy Adams devotes 

 himself to incidents, without giving dates. With this 

 handicap I must beg the indulgence of my readers 

 if apparent or real inaccuracies should occur, because 

 it has been a tedious and time-consuming task to pre- 

 sent the result of my research. 



Jerry M. Nance in his reminiscences records that 

 the trail to the northwest was drawing to a close in 

 1889. In random data I find the comment that the 

 trail to New Mexico was closed in 1895, after having 

 been used twenty-seven years, but from other data 

 I find that the trail to the northwest diminished 

 gradually from 1885 to 1889. I was in Colorado 

 several times from 1880 to 1895, and had occasion 

 to notice the rapid encroachments of fences during 

 that period. 



Texas was fencing rapidly; herds could of course 

 trail through big pastures, but the old open range 

 days were passing by leaps and bounds. The S. M. S. 

 people built their first wire fences in 1882, and were 

 among the pioneers. Saunders, in his introductory 

 chapter entitled "Old Trail Drivers," says: 



In 1867 and for some subsequent years there were no 

 wire fence or material enclosures from the Gulf of Mexico to 

 Kansas ; grass was knee-high, and beef was to be had for the 

 asking. In Texas there was no demand for the longhorn or 

 his hide, but in other states, where the population was 



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