Famous Texans: The longhorns and cattle drives (Part 3)

When the civil war soldiers returned home to Texas they found a devastated economy. e leaders of Texas and the returning soldiers began looking for ways to begin again and get Texas back on her feet. In 1866, cattle in Texas were worth only $4 a head, compared to over $40 a head in the North and East. Because of a lack of market access during the American Civil War, this situation had led to an over stock of longhorn cattle in Texas. Many began looking at all those longhorn cattle, thousands and thousands of them. ere was money in the East and lots of folks got rich from the war. But how to get the cattle there was the problem. During the war a man named Jesse Chisholm had blazed a trail from the Red River through Oklahoma to the railhead in Kansas. at trail could be used to get the cattle to a shipping company started by Joseph G. McCoy that he opened in Abilene, Kansas, in 1867. With the end of the Civil War McCoy believed that the railroads would be interested in increasing their best money maker, freight. e best way to ship cattle, refrigeration was unknown, was on the hoof.

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