To this day, much of Spain consists of dry, high-plains covered with grass and brush rather than trees.  Much of the land is poor farmland, but suitable for sheep.  Before “Columbus sailed the ocean-blue,” wool–rather than cotton—provided the “fabric of our lives.”  However, sheep eat the grass down to the roots if they get the chance.  Sheep-owners learned to move the flocks of sheep from pasture to pasture, often over long distances.  So, sheep were a movable gold-mine.  The flocks were vast, if docile, so the shepherds learned to manage the flocks from horseback.  By the Age of Discovery, Spain abounded in “sheep-boys.” 

            The Spanish “conquistadors” imported these familiar techniques to Mexico.  They applied them to the vast “haciendas” and added cattle to the bargain.  So, “vaqueros” developed the skills of handling cattle herds from horse-back on huge tracts of arid grasslands.  Citizens of the United States first encountered this culture and economy when the government of the Mexican Republic encouraged immigration into Texas (then a part of Mexico) in the 1830s and 1840s.  English-speakers called “haciendas” ranches and “vaqueros” “cowboys.”  From Texas, “ranching” and “cowboys” spread northward and westward. 

            The method in the early days was simple.  Grass land abounded and water could be found.  Horses were faster than cattle, so riders could collect the cattle when needed.  Each year, ranch owners just turned the cattle loose after the calves were born in the Spring.  They fended for themselves for the next six months or so.  In the Fall, the “cowboys” would “round up” the cattle, separate the herd into those suitable for sale and those suitable for breeding.  Most of the cattle would be driven to market, while the minority would be herded back toward the ranch so that they could be cared-for over the winter.  As more and more ranches were started, it got to be difficult to tell who owned which cattle.  This led some clever person to invent “branding.”  This got added to the tasks of the “cowboy.” 

            The classic or “golden age” of “open range” ranching lasted from about 1866-67 to 1886-1887.  The completion of the first trans-continental railroad began a rush of railroads across the Plains.  This opened up access to the cattle markets of the Eastern United States.  At the same time, both industrialization and immigration shot ahead in the East.  Cattle prices rose as demand for meat zoomed upward.  Cattle ranchers began driving their herds toward distant railroad towns for shipment east.  Smelling money, ranchers built up the size of their herds.  Eastern and foreign investors bought up cattle ranches to run on an industrial basis. 

            All of these forces for expansion over-strained the grasslands.  Over-grazing wrecked the grasslands.  Cattle ranchers could see problems coming, even if they did not really understand the causes or see a solution to those problems.[1]  Then the Winter of 1886-1887 broke all sorts of records for different categories of Awful.  Long, bitterly cold and very snowy, it killed off much of the cattle grazing on the open range.  Many ranchers who had borrowed money to expand their herds or Easterners who had invested in Western ranches ran the danger of bankruptcy when their main form of capital—cattle—died in droves. 

            The survivors cut costs and changed their operations.  They fenced the land, not just around the outer edges, but also sub-divided them; limited the size of their ranches; and they leased grazing rights on public lands according to the market for cattle anticipated each year.  The cattle “boom” had ended and the survivors began treating ranching just like some eastern business.  Fencing and sub-division greatly reduced the number of cowboys needed.  They started to go the way of the buffalo and the Indians. 

[1] Like the Plains farmers of the 1870 to 1930s era.  See: “The Grapes of Wrath” (dir. John Ford, 1940).