The Rancher

The Rancher. . , Late spring blizzards , a virtual white-out. Calves born in the thick of it. Straight line winds smacking against wet newborn hide. A rancher struggles to recover a young calf, but sometimes it’s too late. , Deliberate extinction of the buffalo on prairie grasslands, the high plateau, and in the Great Basin not only deprived the native American of his food supply, it resulted in a vacuum to be filled, shortly after the Civil War, with longhorn cattle. In conjunction with railroads, capital from eastern and foreign investors combined to create vast cattle herds where bison had roamed for eons. , Texans created the western longhorn by cross breeding Spanish criollo cattle with the English longhorn… a butcher's worst dream. “Eight pounds of hamburger on eight hundred pounds of bone and horn.” Longhorns were exceptionally hardy and, before grasslands were decimated by overpopulation, winter death rates were low. , In the 1850's, cattle drives from Texas wound further north each year onto the vast prairie to feed on native grass which reached tall as a horse's belly. The Texans sought to link up with railroads extending west into Kansas, where towns such as Abilene, Dodge City, and Wichita catered to dusty cowhands. Trains linked these cow towns to America's beef-hungry eastern cities. , In 1883, young calves sold for five dollars, and mature livestock brought between forty-five and sixty dollars at the railhead. Cattle were fattened in the public domain on free open-range grass. In the early years, it was almost impossible to lose money. Cowhands came pretty cheap, and ranchers had little interest in owning private land to satisfy grazing needs. As the herds stretched further west into the more arid climate, ranchers sought to monopolize only the land with access to water. When fences were strung, they included large tracts of the public domain. It's no wonder that profits of forty percent lured eastern and European investment capital to the West. , Overgrazing eventually led to weakened cattle, and the winter of 1886-87 hit the prairie's ranchers, cowboys, and investors in the face and pocketbook. Howling blizzards and temperatures of -46 degrees Fahrenheit swept down on cowboys and cattle, creating frostbit feet, hooves, ears and tails. Herds were decimated and cattle lay strewn across the landscape. , The story repeated itself in the Great Basin, where cattle , also weakened by overgrazing , died like flies in the winter of 1889-90. Sheep, able to graze on vegetation cattle would not touch, filled the vacuum created when cattle were wiped out. Overgrazing of native grasses encouraged the growth of sagebrush, and erosion of the fragile landscape. , By the late-1880’s, the open range, round-ups and cattle drives in the tradition of Spanish and Mexican cattlemen were at an end. Cattle ranches in Colorado and other western states were broken up and fenced off into smaller operations, growing hay, sorghum and new breeds of grasses. Ranchers relied less on natural vegetation and more on government intervention to protect water rights. Western individualism was locked in a love-hate relationship with government intrusion and regulations. , Early agriculture and its promotion out west (west of the 98th meridian) was a circus of inefficiency as well as small community, railroad and Congressional boosterism. Congress and speculators advertised “rain follows the plow!” They preached that planting trees and crops created humidity and rain such as farmers were familiar with back east. , Reality, however, can be a very sobering experience. Western states are arid, more often dry as a desert bone. Skies are a deep pastoral blue. Few rain clouds or grey skies here! Water is confined to stream beds which channel away snowmelt in spring torrents, and then often lie dry before midsummer. Land without access to water and elaborate irrigation ditches is worthless for agriculture. Lack of water in conjunction with overgrazing sent most yeomen-turned-cattlemen packing, back east, bankrupt, having found only poverty with a view. Five acres of grassland supported one steer in 1870, but due to overgrazing, ninety acres were required ten years later. , John Wesley Powell and the National Academy of Science lobbied to change the design of western land use policy in the late 1880's, but failed due to entrenched western moneyed interests and resulting political power. Powell, a northern Civil War veteran, conservationist and explorer, traveled extensively through the West, eventually becoming head of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1881. , Due to the publicity Powell generated, Congress and promoters found it harder to encourage the sale of arid public land to settlers. Rain does not follow the plow! As a result, the vast majority of dry western land remains in the public domain, and government presence as the primary landlord has become a national legacy. , Thousands of people left a class-bound Europe with wealthy landlords and poor tenant farmers, and came west with a deep belief in greater prosperity. America offered hope at the end of a wagon trail. Congress sought to disburse land through auction, grants, credit, the Homestead Act, and other devices. Southern slave states opposed western homesteading , free land to small farmers was seen as an economic and political threat to slavery and large landholders. , In the 1840's, before the Civil War, western migrants tended to be young. Families on the trail averaged 3.4 children and twenty-two percent of the mothers began the trip pregnant. Thirty-seven percent came as part of a larger group of friends, but in the end, they all came to fulfill a dream of opportunity that was America, in the beautiful but unforgiving western landscape. , © J.M. Hoy '94 , This plaque was donated by the Fraser River Valley Lions Club