Spanish BeginningsToday, people around the world think of cattle when they think of Texas—and vice versa. There is a good reason for this: cattle play a major role in Texas history. Along with railroads and cotton, cattle helped define an important period in the history of the state.

Spanish explorers first brought cattle and horses to what is now Texas. By 1774, about 25,000 Spanish cattle were in the Nueces Valley. Some of them escaped and roamed wild on the plains. Over time, these cows evolved into the lean and tough Texas longhorn. They grew horns up to eight feet wide from tip to tip. Within 40 years, nearly a million wild longhorns roamed the Texas landscape.

South Texas was ideal for raising cattle. Vast grasslands covered the Nueces Valley. It rarely snowed there, and the cows always had green vegetation. Spaniards allowed their cattle to roam the grasslands. They marked their cows with a brand to show ownership.

Spanish vaqueros (bah-KEH-rohz), or cowboys, developed skills in riding, roping, herding, and branding. They wore broad-brimmed hats to provide shade from the sun. Chaps protected their legs from thorns. Saddles with horns carried the cowboys’ rope, blanket, rifle, and canteen. Spanish cowboys used lariats to round up cattle from horseback. A lariat is a long rope with a slipknot at one end, used to lasso cattle and horses.

Early Cattle Ranchers Spanish priests and soldiers were the first cattle ranchers in Texas. In the 1820s, Anglos—many from the southeastern United States—entered the cattle business. Americans brought their own heavier breed of cattle, which they called the “Texas.” The first Anglos in Texas herded on foot. They kept their cattle within fences and did not brand them. However, they marked cows’ ears to show ownership.

Soon, the Americans adopted many ways of the Spanish-Mexican vaqueros. These blended with southern practices to create a Texas ranching culture that emerged after the 1840s.

The Great Cattle TrailsThe Northern demand for beef led to the rise of the cattle trails. A cattle drive began with a roundup, which took place in the spring when grass was green. Cowboys then drove the herds north to towns with rail stations. The cattle were then sent by rail to the Northern states, where they would be slaughtered for meat. Ranchers could make big profits moving a herd to market.

The Expanding Influence of RanchesBy the late 1870s, land and cattle companies owned over half the land in West Texas. Ranchers soon enclosed nearly all the rangeland in South and Southwest Texas using barbed wire. This brought an end to the big cattle drives.

Kenedy, King, and Goodnight Huge ranches spread across Texas. Richard King started with 15,000 acres in Nueces County in 1852. A few years later Mifflin Kenedy joined him. They bought more land. When King died in 1885, he owned more than 600,000 acres. His son-in-law, Robert Justus Kleberg, and widow, Henrietta King, more than doubled the size of the ranch. The King ranch grew to more than one million acres—about as large as the state of Rhode Island. Large ranches like King’s included a store, stables, a blacksmith shop, houses for workers, and wagon sheds.

The Panhandle also had huge ranches. Charles Goodnight’s JA Ranch covered more than one million acres by the late 1880s. The ranch supported about 100,000 cattle. Goodnight improved his cattle through careful breeding. His ranch produced some of the nation’s finest beef. The XIT Ranch was another large Panhandle operation. It enclosed more than three million acres, surrounded by almost 6,000 miles of barbed wire fence. The XIT Ranch was almost as large as the state of Connecticut. A group of investors from Chicago owned the XIT. They had received the land after building a new capitol in Austin in 1888.

The Demise of the Open RangeRanching on the open range worked well, but not for long. Several factors ended the open range in Texas. A key factor was the expansion of railroads in the state. New technologies such as barbed wires and windmills also played a role in closing the open

range.

Texas was now a cattle kingdom. However, horses and sheep also grazed in the state. Wild horses called mustangs were descended from horses the Spanish brought to Texas. Over time, escaped horses formed wild mustang herds. Sheep had been in Texas since Spanish settlement. In the 1850s and 1860s, George Wilkins Kendall widely promoted Texas as an ideal place to raise sheep. With a growing demand for wool, the Texas sheep industry expanded. In the 1880s and 1890s, it benefited

from better transportation and the establishment of wool warehouses. From the early 1870s until 1900, sheep ranchers who used the open range came into conflict with cattle ranchers and farmers. Farmers and ranchers complained that sheep trampled and overgrazed the land. Ranchers and farmers fenced their lands, blocking off the open range.

In the late 1800s barbed-wire fencing was invented. Made up of small, sharpened pieces of wire twisted onto other long strands, barbed wire was quick, easy, and cheap to put up and provided a good barrier. Joseph Glidden invented the most successful type. By 1880, barbed-wire fences were in several Texas counties. As ranchers fenced their land, conflicts arose. At times, fencing cut off access to water sources. Ranchers and herders began cutting fences to reach water. The Texas legislature voted in 1884 to make fence cutting a felony. In the Panhandle, the harsh winter of 1880–1881 caused thousands of wild cattle to drift, or wander, onto ranches seeking food. Ranchers installed barbed-wire drift fences across the edges of their land to prevent overgrazing and protect the herds. Drift fences were fatal to cattle during winter storms, however. During the winters of 1885 to 1887, thousands of cattle died because they had been trapped by drift fences. A number of factors caused the cattle industry to decline in the late 1880s and 1890s.

High profits for ranchers Ranchers expand Overgrazing and falling prices Ranchers sell land or go bankrupt

After the 1890s, ranchers began to closely manage their herds and completely fence in pastureland. Fencing altered the range. For example, to avoid having to drive livestock to water, ranchers and farmers built windmills to pump water from wells.