26 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN November 2025 PAST Great Plains Cattle By the late 1870s, through both promotion and word of mouth, the message spread through Great Britain, particularly Scotland, as well as other parts of Europe and the eastern United States, of the quick riches to be made in the cattle business on the western American prairie. States, promoters and ranches actively sought investment from abroad, producing a second boom in the Plains cattle industry. Building Infrastructure As the industry expanded, so did the infrastructure. The great stockyards at Chicago and Kansas City had already been built by conglomerates of railroad companies in 1865 and 1871, respectively. Another rush of stockyards was added in the early 1880s, including ones in Denver, Omaha and Saint Joseph. Packing plants followed the stockyards so that they became places of one-stop shopping. To cash in on their investment, the railroad companies quickly expanded their rail infrastructure throughout the West in order to haul livestock to their stockyards, as well as rail capacity to the east to haul the meat products to the East Coast population centers. The industry was really revolutionized in 1885 when Gustavus Swift perfected the refrigerated railcar allowing fresh, dressed carcasses to be shipped to eastern cities. In addition to the stockyards, supplying the Indian reservations with beef was also a lucrative business. One example was the Ogallala Cattle Company, which was awarded a contract to supply the Sioux Indian Reservation with 12,000 head annually. The steers were generally 4 years old and up and were delivered to the Pine Ridge and Rose Bud agencies, generally in drafts of 2,500. From there, Native Americans would harvest and process the cattle themselves. Promoting the West By this time, everyone was getting into the act of promoting the western beef industry. States like Texas put out professionally done booklets like Homes for Everyone in Texas and Farmer & Rancher Testimonials, Pan Handle of Texas. Meanwhile, a number of people with little actual knowledge of ranching printed book after book promoting the riches to be made. This included General James S. Brisbin’s The Beef Bonanza or How to get Rich on the Plains and Walter Baron Von Richthofen’s Cattle-Raising of the Plains of North America. Individual ranches also printed books seeking investors, including the Raynolds Cattle Co. of Colorado’s Profits of Cattle Raising. Even future President Teddy Roosevelt managed to pen three books, including Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman and The Wilderness Hunter, based on his ranching and hunting experience in the Badlands from 1883 to 1887. Many of these authors had dubious credentials to supply expertise on ranching, but still investors gobbled up the information as if it was gospel. For instance, General Brisbane had grown up in the central Pennsylvania town of Boalsburg and, after the Civil War, spent his career serving in the military in the Northwest. Walter Baron Von Richthofen was an immigrant from Germany who was the uncle of the famous World War I flying ace “The Red Baron.” He was primarily a land speculator in Denver who tried to develop a planned community just outside the city. Teddy Roosevelt went out of business ranching and moved back east after the severe winter of 1886-87. Foreign investment from the United Kingdom was helped with their 1879 Naturalization Act, which eased regulation on British investment abroad. In addition, the British Royal Commission of 1879 studied the effects of American imported &
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