August 2025 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN 21 particularly serving Kansas. With this railroad infrastructure, hauling livestock and meat products became a major revenue source for railroads. In this light, various railroad companies banded together to build a series of stockyards to facilitate livestock markets and improve railroads’ profitability. The largest and grandest of the new stockyards would be built four miles south of Chicago city limits on what, at the time, was 345 acres of marshland, replacing six smaller stockyards scattered around the city. Chicago was an ideal location as it was already a transportation hub prior to the Civil War. By traveling through the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal and Hudson River, cattle could be transported on these waterways to New York City. In addition, transporters could utilize improved roads, as well as a canal system that crossed Pennsylvania, to efficiently access the Philadelphia and Baltimore markets. With the introduction of rail, an express line was built in 1852 to transport cattle, and later meat products, non-stop from Chicago to New York. What would become Chicago’s Union Stock Yards and Transit Company resulted from nine railroad companies pooling their resources. However, turning 345 acres of marshland into the world’s largest stockyards would be no easy task. They first had to drain the land with a series of tile drains, sewers and a canal to move the waste and fluids the half mile from the stockyards to the South Branch of the Chicago River. Once the land was dried, they built a rail system to supply the 1,000 laborers working on the site with the massive amount of lumber, posts and supplies needed to build pens, alleyways, feed storage, water infrastructure and facilities to unload and load the railcars. Construction started in June 1865 and was amazingly completed for a grand opening on Christmas day of that year. Other stockyards would spring up in those early years in places like Kansas City and Saint Joseph, Mo., and Omaha, but none ever compared with the great one in Chicago. Cattle and Grass ‘Gold Rush’ It all seemed like a way to print money: a huge herd of feral cattle in Texas that could become someone’s property if they could round them up and get their iron on them. There was a ready market for cattle by driving them to a railhead, primarily in Kansas, for transport to one of the stockyards. In addition, as bison were removed from the range, what was thought by many to be an inexhaustible resource of freerange grass for cattle production was left behind. Investors rolled in hoping to take advantage of the quick riches the U.S. High Plains cattle industry promised to deliver. There were certainly families of means from the eastern United States who invested in the western cattle industry, but A roped Texas steer. They were also called Mexicans, Longhorns and Mustangs. Credit: Library of Congress. The progression of transportation and communication shown in an 1890 photo near Danville, Penn. From right to left: the Susquehanna River, a canal, a railroad, telegraph line and a dirt road with a horse-drawn buckboard wagon. Credit: Library of Congress. Transcontinental railroads and land grants circa 1850-1900 Hart-Bolton American history maps. The colored lines indicate the government laying grounds given to the railroad to sell to pay for the railroad. Credit: Library of Congress. CONTINUED ON PAGE 22
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