Equus – August 2019

76 EQUUS 498 AUTUMN 2019

O

ver the past two centu-
ries, the cattle industry in
America has undergone
profound change. While
farmers in Colonial times
commonly kept a few steers to slaughter
for meat and hides, as settlers crossed
the Mississippi the raising of beef be-
came a full-time occupation. Particularly
in Texas, ranchers accumulated huge
acreages stocked with thousands of
head of cattle. Large numbers of tough
yet tractable horses were needed for
vaqueros and cowboys to ride---and it
helped if those same horses had at least
a lick of “cow sense.”
During the cattle-drive decades
immediately after the Civil War, Texas
ranches drove thousands of steers north
to railheads in Abilene, Dodge City and
Baxter Springs in Kansas. For about
30 years, this was a hugely profi table
enterprise. Already by the mid-1880s,
however, cattle-drive days were num-
bered as railroads began to cross Texas.
As the network of tracks grew, much of

including gathering, sorting, penning,

doctoring, dehorning, castrating and

branding, stopped being carried out

from horseback. Some mega-ranches

quit breeding horses and cattle as

the properties were sold to wealthy

entrepreneurs who wanted private

hunting preserves or even testing

grounds for airplanes or spaceships.

Sometimes big ranches in Texas

were owned by people who really

weren’t ranchers. One such was Swante

Magnus Swenson, who arrived in

Austin, Texas, in 1850. There, he set

up business as an overland merchant,

but he was always a farmer at heart.

Texas law at the time permitted anyone

who held railroad certifi cates to fi le

on unclaimed acreage, and Swenson

bought railroad rights that by 1860

allowed him to gobble up over 128,000

acres around Austin in addition to his

West Texas holdings, which came to

an additional half-million acres. Such

large claims could not be managed by

Swenson and his two sons alone, so he

Barbed wire, big

ranches and the

making of the

modern Quarter

Horse.

By Deb Bennett, PhD

CONFORMATION INSIGHTS

THE END OF

THE OPEN

RANGE

what had been open range was fenced,

making long drives impossible.

Then came something few people

anticipated: the complete takeover

of agriculture by gasoline- and

diesel-fueled machinery. In the 50

years between 1920 and 1970, cattle-

handling activities on most ranches,