Dr. Whitfield: Today we are looking at the great cattle drives that began in Texas right after the Civil War.

Dr. Whitfield: When the war ended in eighteen sixty-five, Texas had millions of longhorn cattle and very few buyers. Here, a steer was worth only a few dollars. But in the growing cities of the North, people wanted beef, and the same steer could sell for many times that price. The problem was getting the cattle there.

Dr. Whitfield: The answer was the railroad. Rail lines had reached Kansas, but not Texas. So ranchers hired cowboys to walk huge herds north on trails like the Chisholm Trail, to railroad towns such as Abilene, Kansas. From there, the cattle went east by train.

Dr. Whitfield: Many of those cowboys were Black or Mexican American, and much of cowboy life, from roping to the saddle itself, came from Mexican vaqueros.

Dr. Whitfield: Within about twenty years, the long drives were over. Railroads were built into Texas, so ranchers could ship cattle from close to home, and barbed wire fences closed off the open land the herds had crossed. So remember: the drives existed because of one gap, the distance between the cattle and the railroad. When that gap closed, so did the drives.