Rise and Fall of the Beef Industry

1. Rise and Fall of the Beef Industry Or hoofin’ heifers to the railhead until they are dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAvT521-gLo

2. In Praise of Beef • The cattle trade was at its peak from 1867 until the early 1880s. • The following factors contributed to this: • Increased number of railway lines - able to transport cattle to new markets (Omaha, Chicago, New York, San Francisco) •  Development of refrigerated rail carriages - cattle could be slaughtered before transportation (saves shipping costs) • Removal of Indians from the Plains to reservations - more land available for ranching

3. Downfall of the cattle industry • In the last twenty years of the nineteenth century the beef trade virtually collapsed. The following factors contributed to this: • Farmers began to experiment with different breeds of cattle that could not live on the open range. (wanted beefier cows) • There was less grass available for grazing due to the number of people settling on the Plains. (dang farmers) • In 1883 a drought limited grass on the prairie. • The demand for beef fell which meant that ranching was less profitable. (economic downturn squashed demand for all items) • The winter of 1886/7 was very severe - cattle and cowboys died in the freezing temperatures

4. Only here for a good time, not a long time • In roughly 25 years, the cowboy lifestyle and the wild west captured the imagination of the world. • Number of books films, stories about the life of the cowboy tell the popularity of the genre. • Europeans vacation in America pretending to be cowboys. • The cowboy is still heroic and dramatized today.