8220;farmers and their families also fought a constant battle with the elements: tornadoes, hailstorms, droughts, prairie fires, blizzards, and pests” (Tindall 879). Eventually, though a few communities continued to be devoted almost exclusively to mining, the real wealth of Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and California proved to be in the grass and soil. Cattle-raising, long an important industry in Texas, flourished after the Civil War, when enterprising men began to drive their Texas longhorn cattle north across the open public land. Feeding as they went, the cattle arrived at railway shipping points in Kansas, larger and fatter than when they started. Soon this "long drive" became a regular event, and, for hundreds of kilometers, trails were dotted with herds of cattle moving northward. Cattle-raising spread into the trans-Missouri region, and immense ranches appeared in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakota territory. Western cities flourished as centers for the slaughter and dressing of meat. Ranching introduced a colorful mode of existence with the picturesque cowboy as its central figure. Although the reality of cowboy life, with its low pay and grueling work, was far from romantic, its mythological hold on the American imagination has remained strong, from the novels of the 1870s to the films of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in the late 20th century. Altogether, between 1866 and 1888, some six million head of cattle were driven up from Texas to winter on the high plains of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. The cattle boom reached its height in 1885, when the range became too heavily pastured to support the long drive, and was beginning to be crisscrossed by railroads. Not far behind the rancher creaked the covered wagons of the farmers bringing their families, their draft horses, cows and pigs. Under the Homestead Act they staked their claims and fenced them with a new invention, barbed wire. Ranchers were o...
