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The sheep wars, [1] [2] or the sheep and cattle wars, [3] [4] were a series of armed conflicts in the Western United States fought between sheepmen and cattlemen over grazing rights. Sheep wars occurred in many western states, though they were most common in Texas , Arizona , and the border region of Wyoming and Colorado .
A range war, also known as range conflict or cattle war, is a type of usually violent conflict, most commonly in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the American West. The subject of these conflicts was control of " open range ", or range land freely used for cattle grazing, or as sheep pasture , which gave these conflicts its name.
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.
The outbreak of World War I led to a revolution in modern warfare, and the use of barbed wire on the battlefield was one of the many technologies relied upon to hamper the enemy's attack. Used by American cattle ranchers since the 1870s, barbed wire was adapted on the Western Front to serve a more gruesome purpose than containing livestock. [2]
From then on, ranchers generally raised feed to ensure they could keep their cattle alive over winter. [49] When there was too little rain for row crop farming, but enough grass for grazing, cattle ranching became dominant. Before the railroads arrived in Texas the 1870s cattle drives took large herds from Texas to the railheads in Kansas.
The cattle kings began to fence off their lands to protect access to the rangelands and water, which infuriated many homesteaders. [5] There were many cases when large ranch owners not only fenced the property over which they claimed ownership, but also property considered public land.
The United States Railroad Administration (USRA) was the name of the nationalized railroad system of the United States between December 28, 1917, and March 1, 1920. [1] It was the largest American experiment with nationalization, and was undertaken against a background of war emergency following American entry into World War I .
The cattle drives died out in the 1880s, as quarantines were imposed to stop the tick disease some herds carried. Furthermore cattle ranches in Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas grew rapidly in size, and produced better quality beef cattle which could be shipped east on the other land grant railroads.