10 MISC. PUBLICATION 9 0, U. S. DEPT. OP AGRICULTURE 



In the nineteenth century in the latter part of the seventies, the 

 West awoke to the opportunities offered for raising cattle and 

 sheep upon the open ranges (fig. 4) that lay west of the Missouri 

 River from the Mexican to the Canadian line. Great cattle compa- 

 nies were formed in the East and in Europe, the promoters of which 

 went into Texas and bought thousands of long-horned cattle and 

 moved them north on to the unoccupied ranges. Those were the 

 great years of the Texas trails, during which that State disgorged 

 hundreds of thousands of her surplus cattle into the new unstocked 

 ranges to the north. 



In consequence of overgrazing, disaster befell the livestock indus- 

 try again and again. The longhorns of the West and the better 

 breeds from the East spread out over the entire region. By 1895 

 no open range remained unstocked. Ranges that, for permanent 

 and regular use, would have been fully stocked with a cow to every 



Figure 4. — Types of western range land : A, cattle range ; B, sheep range 



40 acres, were loaded until they were carrying one to every 10 acres. 

 Into western Kansas, Nebraska, eastern Colorado, out into the Red 

 Desert country of Wyoming and Utah, up across Montana and the 

 two Dakotas, clear to the Canadian line, they pressed in their search 

 for grass. Final readjustment was brought about, but the business of 

 raising cattle upon the open ranges has always been a fluctuating one. 

 Along in the early nineties, the sheep industry came into active 

 competition with the cattle industry. The sheepman was much bet- 

 ter able to cope with conditions than was the cattleman, and many 

 of the latter, in sheer self-defense, joined the ranks of the wool- 

 growers and gave up the cattle industry. However, with the swell- 

 ing tide of settlement overflowing the western prairies, under the 

 homestead and other land laws, competition for the ranges became 

 more and more fierce, and this competition developed into the range 

 wars which were checked only with the placing under Federal regu- 

 lation in national forests during the first decade of the present 



