November 2025 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN 27 Grass Gold Rush beef on UK producers and concluded that the UK bloodstock was not threatened by inferior Texas Longhorns. They also reported that there was a great deal of money to be made for British investors by grazing cattle on the “self-made hay” of the free range in the American West. Buying Up the West The promotion worked. In 1878, John Campell raised a total of $50,000 from five Chicago investors to start the Matador Ranch in the Texas Panhandle. Three years later the Matador was sold to Scotch investors for $1,250,000. Other examples include Swan Ranch in Wyoming and the Rocking Chair Ranch in Texas. Similarly, the Bay State Cattle Company was financed primarily with money from Great Britain as well as Maine and Massachusetts. The president of Bay State was G.W. Simpson of Boston, and they immediately started buying up ranches in Nebraska and Wyoming. This included two of Nebraska’s larger ranches, the Creighton and Coad operations that were discussed in this column last month. As was common at the time, Bay State primarily bought these ranches based on “book count of the cattle inventory and possessory rights on the land.” Book count was nothing more than an educated guess on how many cattle a ranch had, and included all the steers of various ages, which were generally marketed as 4-year-olds, as well as cows and herd sires. It was assumed a herd would have a calf crop each year of 25 percent of the book count. These book counts were generally overly optimistic by the seller of how many cattle they had, and the 25 percent calf crop often failed to materialize, both from an over-estimation of the number of cows as well as higher than expected death loss from bad weather. & Book cover of The Beef Bonanza or How to Get Rich on The Plains by Gen. James S. Brisbin of the United States. CONTINUED ON PAGE 28 Advertisement for Iowa and Nebraska land for sale at low prices and low interest rates in 1872. Credit: Library of Congress.
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