The Smoky Hill River Valley - Buffalo Country

The Smoky Hill River Valley - Buffalo Country. . , The death knell of the buffalo sounded when men got to hunting them for their hides only.., and they did, recklessly, ruthlessly. , - William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, There may have been as many as 30 million bison on the North American plains at their height. But after about 1840 their numbers began to decline. By 1880 only a few hundred survived. Why?, A three-hundred year climate cycle called "the little Ice Age" came to an end in the 1840s. The weather on the plains grew hotter and dryer [sic], and the prairie grasses grew more slowly. Before long, there were more buffalo than the land could support, and the herds grew smaller., But Indian people still relied on the buffalo and killed up to 250,000 per year. Huge numbers of wild and domesticated horses, as many as 2 million, competed for rang. And by the 1850s and 1860s, habitat began disappearing to towns, farms, railroads, and livestock raising., Finally, in the 1870s, world demand for leather -- and a nationwide economic depression -- brought thousands of out-of-work adventurers onto the plains as "hide hunters." Hunting pressures on the herds led to their near extinction., Buffalo Bill, who began his career and gained notoriety by hunting buffalo to feed the Kansas Pacific Railroad workers and leading celebrated buffalo hunts for European royalty, later worked to save the buffalo, preserving a small herd of buffalo, of which many buffalo today are descendants., The crusade to save the buffalo that began in the 1880s has been called the beginning of the modern conservation movement., Buffalo Facts , Bison, or Buffalo? Both are correct. The scientific name is Bison bison. The first Europeans to see them described the American bison as boeufs, or cattle. The word grew into "buffalo," and it stuck., Buffalo calves are reddish in color but look like the calves of domestic cattle. Full-grown bison stand over 6-feet high at the shoulder and weigh over a ton., Beginning in the 1880s, people such as Buffalo Bill and Charles J. "Buffalo" Jones became conservationists. Cody had 20 or more in his Wild West show. Buffalo Jones raised buffalo on his ranch near Garden City, Kansas. Many of the bison grazing in national parks and grasslands are descended from those saved by Jones and Cody. Today there are more than 250,000 buffalo., The giant herds were actually made up of many smaller groups of 100 or fewer. Female bison lead the herds to good grazing. Their special eyesight lets them "see" the nutrition in grass. , , , , , , , , , Photos courtesy of Kansas State Historical Society [and] Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY