and other entrepreneurs, led their herds north by a
more westerly route, across unsettled grasslands, to
the Kansas Pacific line at Abilene, Kansas, which
McCoy described as “a very small, dead place, con-
sisting of about one dozen log huts.” They earned
excellent profits, and during the next five years about
1.5 million head made the “long drive” over the
Chisholm Trail to Abilene, where they were sold to
ranchers, feedlot operators, and the agents of eastern
meatpackers. Other shipping points sprang up as the
railroads pushed westward. According to the best
estimates 10 million head were driven north before
the practice ended in the mid-1880s. (For the story
of one cowboy, see the American Lives essay on “Nat
Love,” p. 452.)Cowboys and Cattleatwww.myhistorylab.comReadtheDocumentChisholm Trailatwww.myhistorylab.comWatchtheVideoThis ad for barbed wire depicts several scenes: A wooden fence has been swept away by a flood (left) and set afire (right). On the bottom, a
barbed wire fence separates cattle from the railroad.
450 Chapter 16 The Conquest of the West
In the northern cities they would bring ten times that
much, perhaps even more. Why not round them up
and herd them northward to the railroads, allowing
them to feed along the way on the abundant grasses
of the plains? The land was unoccupied and owned by
the federal government. Anyone could drive cattle
across it without paying a fee or asking anyone’s per-
mission. The grass the cattle ate on the way swiftly
renewed itself.
In 1866 a number of Texans drove large herds
northward toward Sedalia, Missouri, railhead of the
Missouri Pacific. This route took the herds through
wooded and settled country and across Indian reser-
vations, which provoked many difficulties. At the
same time Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving suc-
cessfully drove 2,000 head in a great arc west to the
New Mexico Territory and then north to Colorado.
The next year the drovers, inspired by a clever
young Illinois cattle dealer named Joseph G. McCoy