Cowboys, Railroads, and Meat Packers

The growth of railroads and the growth of the meat packing industry in the postbellum years of 1865-1900 complimented one another. The growth of railroads was often spurred by the desire to open new markets and to bring western produce and livestock to eastern cities.

Cowboys from Texas were transporting large herds of cattle to St. Louis as early as the 1840s, for shipping eastward on riverboats or the new railways where they existed. In the days before refrigeration these cattle would not be slaughtered until they reached their final destination, where they would be slaughtered and often preserved with salted, and often canned, though some would be sold fresh on the day of the slaughter. Preservation was much harder, after all, in the days before refrigeration. The earliest trail along which cattle were taken was sometimes referred to as the Sedalia Trail, as that was one of the destinations in Missouri, though branches of this trail went all the way to St. Louis.

Railways were a new invention in the 1840s. They were starting to be built in the northeast of the United States, but it took until the early 1850s for them to even reach the Mississipi and start to be built in Missouri. Around this time, some farmers in Missouri started causing problems for the cowboys driving the herds from Texas through Missouri. The Texas longhorn cattle had a tick-borne illness to which they had an immunity, and which didn’t make the meat unsafe for human consumption, but to which the local cattle were susceptible. Because of this they lobbied the Missouri legislature and passed laws to keep Texas cattle from passing through Missouri.

Meanwhile, the railroads expanded westward into Kansas. The War of Secession in the 1860s slowed down the development of railroads, but after the war they continued to expand rapidly. By the late 1860s, cowboys who had been following the eastern Sedalia Trail now shifted westward to trails like the Chisholm Trail, blazed by John Chisholm. The main railhead by this point was Abilene, Kansas. By this point, though, farmers in eastern Kansas were also trying to keep out Texas cattle, so the trails shifted west yet again in the 1870s, going to places like Dodge City, Kansas, or even all the way up to Montana at times, using trails like the Loving-Goodnight trail.

Cowboys were the prime mover for the meat industry at this point, for without their labor the meat packers would have nothing to work with. A typical trail drive could last several months, and the average herd being moved was about three thousand head of cattle, though larger and smaller herds were sometimes moved. A typical trail drive involved around ten or twelve cowboys, including the trail boss and the cook. They might also be accompanied by other travelers heading in the same direction, who would travel with them for increased safety. There were numerous dangers along the way, including wildlife, rustlers, and occasionally attacks from Native Americans. The biggest danger, though, was river crossings.

Cattle herds were taken across rivers at fords, or low points, in the river. Sometimes these fords were easy to cross, but inclement weather could lead to flash floods, and some rivers with sandy bottoms could turn into quicksand, or swift currents sweep cattle and cowboys downstream to their death. To make river crossings less dangerous, cowboys would typically remove all their clothing, storing it in a watertight pouch in their saddlebags, and would swim nude alongside their horse until across the river. This would keep their clothes from becoming waterlogged, or, worse, filled with sand, as sometimes occurred on the Cimmaron River, which was at times essentially a flowing stream of sand mingled with water. To date, the only media portraying this practice of cowboys on trail drives in an accurate manner was the third episode of the TV miniseries Lonesome Dove. Needless to say, drowning was the most typical cause of death for a cowboy on the trail. By the late 1870s railroads were connecting Texas to the rest of the country, and the days of the long cattle drives began to fade, disappearing entirely by the early twentieth century.

When the cattle finally reached a railhead they would be sped to their final destination. As stated earlier, usually the cattle would be kept alive until they reached their final market in the days before refrigeration. The rise of refrigeration made the process easier, but, even before this technology became available, live cattle were often brought eastward before being taken to slaughterhouses. As refrigeration became prominent, the meat packing industry also became concentrated in larger meat packing plants owned by large corporations. These plants didn’t always follow safe procedures, and a book describing the unsafe practices of the meat packers eventually led to the creation of the FDA in the early twentieth century.