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Map of major cattle trails between 1866-1890. The first large-scale effort to drive cattle from Texas to the nearest railhead for shipment to Chicago occurred in 1866, when many Texas ranchers banded together to drive their cattle to the closest point that railroad tracks reached, which at that time was Sedalia, Missouri.
Cowboys were hired to gather, drive, and hold cattle at major buying stations. Cowboys reported route trail fatalities of about 3%. As the railroads expanded, processors multiplied and refrigeration technology developed, the refrigerated rail car was patented in 1867. The need to drive cattle ended and the cattle drive trail disappeared by 1889.
The railroads generally preferred to use standard boxcars because that type of car proved much more versatile in the number of different types of loads it could carry. [8] When the railroads and cattle industry failed to act quickly enough to correct these perceived deficiencies, the government and even the general public went into action.
Stockyards mostly handled cattle and pigs for beef and pork production, but occasionally served as waystations for other animals. For example, around 1934 a dozen American bison from Colorado headed for Santa Catalina Island were held at the Los Angeles Union Stock Yards before boarding the ferry for their final leg of the trip.
In the United States, railroads are designated as Class I, Class II, or Class III, according to size criteria first established by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in 1911, and now governed by the Surface Transportation Board (STB). The STB's current definition of a Class I railroad was set in 1992, that being any carrier earning annual ...
Union Stock Yards, Chicago, 1947. The Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., or The Yards, was the meatpacking district in Chicago for more than a century, starting in 1865. The district was formed by a group of railroad companies that acquired marshland and turned it into a vast centralized processing area.
This worsening situation for railroad workers led to strikes against many railroads, culminating in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, involving over 100,000 people in multiple cities. [ 58 ] The Great Strike began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia , in response to the cutting of wages for the second time in a year by the B&O Railroad.
A cattle wagon or a livestock wagon is a type of railway vehicle designed to carry livestock.Within the classification system of the International Union of Railways they fall under Class H - special covered wagons - which, in turn are part of the group of covered goods wagons, although cattle have historically also been transported in open goods wagons.