How Did The Cowboys Grow After The Civil War

The nation saw tremendous growth in the west after the civil war. Such growth includes the business of mining, ranching, and farming. Three factors that allowed for expansions in these business included dry farming, placer mining, or simple mining, and long drive, for ranching. Dry farming involved techniques like planting crops that do not need a lot of water. Placer mining was used by either single miners or miners in small group who searched for minerals closer to the surface. They shoveled loose dirt into boxes then ran it under water causing heavy minerals, like gold or silver, to sink to the bottom; this worked well in finding loose gold that washed out of the rocks. Long drives was the transportation of cattle; the job of cowboys, from ranges into cow towns.

Some succeed while many failed. The work was far from easy or enjoyable. The pay was all dependent on experience. Cowboys had to face bad weather conditions (like thunderstorms), rough unleveled and muddy roads, often cattle thieves, and stampedes. The day was often 18 hours long, as the cowboys had to guide the cattle and be on constant look out for anything alerting. One other challenge was that farmers began to close off their fields with barbed wire, to keep the cattle out so they couldn’t graze the field. When in the business of ranching, cattlemen were often the fault of their downfall. Cattle weren’t allowed to graze farmer’s fields, they over grazed the remainder range which damaged the prairie grass. They also overstocked the market which lowered the price of beef. By 1885-86 when 85% of cattle were lost due to starvation and freezing temperatures, thousands of individual ranchers and many large corporations were ruined. Cattle ranching, and some cattle ranchers survived, but were not as big as before, with new breeds of cattle that replaced the Texas