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- The event changed the cattle industry forever, ending the practice of open-range grazing. Ranchers also called this weather event “The Big Die-Up,” or “Death’s Cattle Round-Up.” The deadly winter helped usher in an era of smaller-scale ranching and federal rangeland management to prevent massive, livestock-caused environmental degradation.
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Open range, in U.S. history, any of several areas of public domain north of Texas where from about 1866 to 1890 more than 5,000,000 head of cattle were driven to fatten and be shipped off to slaughter. The open ranges of western Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and other Western.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Oct 24, 2017 · There are three main factors for this: Overstocking. Beef was in huge demand in the 1870’s and early 1880’s and, as cattle prices rose, ranchers began to rear more and more cattle on the open range. This meant the grass on the open range became overstocked.
Jan 9, 2015 · Most also quit the open range, where livestock could roam far from grain reserves, in favor of smaller, fenced in grazing territories.
Free-roaming range cattle were calved, moved between grazing lands, and driven to market by cowboys. Brands on cattle marked who owned them. Unbranded cattle, known as "mavericks", could become the property of anyone able to capture and brand them.
The expansion of large ranches, multiplying herds of livestock, and barbed wire all served to close the open range in Texas. In 1876, wire salesman John Gates demonstrated the wire to skeptical cattlemen. He made a barbed wire corral in front of the Alamo that penned longhorn cattle.
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the open range was over. Despite the decline of the cattle era, the industry created an impor-tant legacy in Texas. Throughout the world, people associate Texas with cowboys and cattle ranchers, and many Texans still raise and sell cattle. In addition, tourists visit Texas to watch rodeos and tour cattle opera-tions such as the King Ranch.
Jul 10, 2014 · The final blow to the open range came in 1949, when Florida became the last state in the union to pass a mandatory fence law. Extension, a longtime advocate of fencing, was able to help ranchers acquire timber cheaply and demonstrate how they could treat fence posts against weather damage.
