Cattle Barons and Open Range     by Gene Gade      airs Nov. 4, 2007     1:33 long

These bronze statues in a town square in Buffalo, Wyoming       capture one of the compelling dramas of western U.S. history. An enforcer employed by the owner of a large cattle operation is reaching for his rifle to confront a cowboy caught branding a maverick calf. 

Removal of the buffalo and Indians from the northern Great Plains a few years earlier had created an enormous space filled with some of the finest grazing land in the world and almost        no people or livestock.  Within a few years, huge herds of cattle from Texas and Mexico were driven on to the open range, creating the brief but spectacular era of the cattle barons.

The lure of land and cheap resources soon attracted many other men of lesser wealth but who also wanted to establish ranches. They thought of themselves as legitimate small businessmen.  The cattle barons thought of them as squatters, nesters, outlaws and

rustlers. Conflicts such as the famous Johnson County War were the

inevitable result. Ironically, it was economic and ecological forces that ended the cattle baron era. 

In the aftermath, the range was fenced into much smaller units, animal numbers were reduced and most operators began harvesting hay and feeding it to livestock in the winter. That pattern of ranching persists to this day. I’m Gene Gade of the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service.