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I must assume you are asking about cattle drives since you don't ask it in your question. Kansas was the nearest rail line for the cattle drives. Kansas City had the largest stockyards for the trains going east.
I must assume you are asking about cattle drives since you don't ask it in your question. Kansas was the nearest rail line for the cattle drives. Kansas City had the largest stockyards for the trains going east.
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barb wire
The expansion of railways was the direct cause of this.
The quick easy answer is..The open plains were cut up by "Barbed Wire" Barbed wire put an end to the great Cattle drives of the old West and to a certain extent The Cowboy.
The growth of towns and farms took up most of the grazing land along the routes of the drives, and the expansion of the railroads meant cattle could be shipped directly to the slaughterhouse.
The first railroads built in Texas were used to transport cattle from the open range to the Chicago markets. With their completion the age of cattle drives and cowboys came to an end.
They put up fences. Cattle used to roam freely on the Great Plains. Later, farmers put up barbed wire fences in order to share the land and divide it. The fences ended the cattle drives that were an essential part of the Cattle Kingdom.
Those were jobs that were available. There was lots of demand back east in restaurants for beef, the cattle were raised out west far from the few western railroads, so it was necessary to hire cowboys to drive the cattle all the way from the range to the railroad. Within about 10 years the railroads expanded and went directly to where the cattle were raised and the age of cowboys and long cattle drives came to an end. The cowboys lost their jobs.
Cattle drive came to an end because of the invention of the barbed wire and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Thousands of cattle also perished due to an outbreak of Texas Fever and the Great Winter of 1887-88, which also contributed to the end of the famous cattle drives of the Old West.
Cattle drives still exist as they did in the late 1800s, but not over the same extensive distances. The growth of towns and farms and extensive use of barbed wire blocked many of the traditional routes, and much of the open grazing land became private property. The advent of the railroads meant that it became cheaper in many cases to ship cattle by rail, so the drives were from the ranches to the local stockyards, where the cattle cars would be loaded.