First published in 1948, this is the true story of John Benjamin Kendrick (1857-1933), a Texan cattleman who later served as a United States Senator from Wyoming and as the ninth Governor of Wyoming. Kendrick was raised on a ranch and in 1879, at age 22, he signed on with the Snyder-Wulfjen Brothers of Round Rock, Texas, to help bring a herd of steers from Matagorda Bay on the Gulf of Mexico to the grasslands of Wyoming. He settled on a ranch near Sheridan and raised cattle as a cowboy, ranch foreman, and later cattle company owner. Cowboys and Cattle Trails tells of the young Kendrick’s daring adventures and hard work along in the Old West.

The iconic American cowboy is a long-running part of popular culture. But when did cowboys first appear in history? What influenced their creation? Dive deep into your exploration of US history with this primary source book that provides unique insights and personal connections to history. Examples of primary sources include a poster of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, an 1840 engraving of vaqueros, a map of the Chisholm Trail, and many more. This 32-page book includes text features that help students increase reading comprehension and their understanding of the subject. Packed with interesting facts, sidebars, and essential vocabulary, this book is perfect for reports or projects.

The iconic American cowboy is a long-running part of popular culture. But when did cowboys first appear in history? What influenced their creation? Dive deep into your exploration of US history with this primary source book that provides unique insights and personal connections to history. Examples of primary sources include a poster of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, an 1840 engraving of vaqueros, a map of the Chisholm Trail, and many more. This 32-page book includes text features that help students increase reading comprehension and their understanding of the subject. Packed with interesting facts, sidebars, and essential vocabulary, this book is perfect for reports or projects.

Tells the stories of sixteen women who drove cattle up the trail from Texas during the last half of the nineteenth century.

Colorful illustrations and maps explain the life and times of the American cowboy from 1840 to 1890.

The Western Cattle Trail stretched from the southern most points of Texas to the Canadian border. It carried more longhorns a longer distance for more years than any other cattle trail. The trek across Texas, Indian Territory, Kansas, Nebraska and beyond required months of hard trail life for the drivers and herds. However, most maps show this trial ending at Dodge City, Kansas.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Readers recognize the cowboy as a symbol of the Wild West, but this book illustrates what life was like for real cowboys. Readers will learn about the Spanish origins of cowboys, as well as the rise of America’s cattle industry. This book also describes cattle drives and the famous trails ridden by real cowboys. Vivid visuals are paired with engaging text to deliver an adventurous reading experience. This high-interest book is supplemented by sidebars and “Truth or Myth?” fact boxes to deepen the reader’s understanding of this iconic figure in the Wild West.

Recounts events of an 1877 cattle drive from southern Texas to Ogallala, Nebraska, through the letters and journals of two boys and an older member of the crew.

How did cattle drives come about—and why did the cowboy become an iconic American hero? Cattle drives were the largest, longest, and ultimately the last of the great forced animal migrations in human history. Spilling out of Texas, they spread longhorns, cowboys, and the culture that roped the two together throughout the American West. In cities like Abilene, Dodge City, and Wichita, buyers paid off ranchers, ranchers paid off wranglers, and railroad lines took the cattle east to the packing plants of St. Louis and Chicago. The cattle drives of our imagination are filled with colorful cowboys prodding and coaxing a line of bellowing animals along a dusty path through the wilderness. These sturdy cowhands always triumph over stampedes, swollen rivers, and bloodthirsty Indians to deliver their mighty-horned companions to market—but Tim Lehman’s Up the Trail reveals that the gritty reality was vastly different. Far from being rugged individualists, the actual cow herders were itinerant laborers—a proletariat on horseback who connected cattle from the remote prairies of Texas with the nation’s industrial slaughterhouses. Lehman demystifies the cowboy life by describing the origins of the cattle drive and the extensive planning, complicated logistics, great skill, and good luck essential to getting the cows to market. He reveals how drives figured into the larger story of postwar economic development and traces the complex effects the cattle business had on the environment. He also explores how the premodern cowboy became a national hero who personified the manly virtues of rugged individualism and personal independence. Grounded in primary sources, this absorbing book takes advantage of recent scholarship on labor, race, gender, and the environment. The lively narrative will appeal to students of Texas and western history as well as anyone interested in cowboy culture.