I searched. I read. Perhaps my memory has failed me. In preparation for this post, I was going to grab a quote from a local history book.
I could not find what I wanted, so perhaps it was in another book, or I just didn’t find it. The topic was the importing of cattle into the Big Horn Basin. Many herds came from from Oregon and Texas in the 1880’s. Thousands of head. From May 1886 on, the weather was unusually hot and dry. The grass had not developed enough for the thousands of cattle. Many springs went dry. In the fall of 1886, November 17th, came the first storm. December 8th again. January 8, 1887, 16” of new snow on what was there, high winds, and -27* measured.
From Washakie: A Wyoming County History by Ray Pendergraft, “Steers which were able, drifted along in the wind, to end up against illegal fences where they piled up and perished. February brought in another fierce storm. The snow was crusted so that cattle could walk on it, and their hoofs squeaked on the frozen snow as they wandered, hocks, chins and nostrils bleeding, seeking the grass that lay two feet beneath their feet.”
It was a devastating winter for the big cattlemen. Thousands upon thousands of cattle died. It was the beginning of the end for the huge ranches, many of them backed by English and Scottish nobles. I couldn’t find the paragraph that described the herd in this area. But when I first arrived here, Johnny told me of a place where skulls and bones of some of these ill fated steers lay. He let me take one as a souvenir, leaving the rest as a marker. As Vernon cleared the trees and brush away, I returned to the spot.
Sheltered against this bank, weakened by hunger, Texas steers gave in to the brittle cold. I found only one skull partially buried.
The dry soil and sheltering rock protected the bones, but not the flesh.
Hay was not part of ranching at that time, but the smaller ranches that evolved from the breakup of the large ranches, remembered the lesson. To this day, supplementing winter feed is the norm for the majority of ranchers. It was a difficult and heartbreaking loss.
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So often what we know of cattle ranching is the fights between cattlemen and sheep ranchers that were in the movies,” back in the day.” This is sad and horrifying. Those poor cattle, and the weather in Texas is nothing like Wyoming. Thanks for the history lesson, Carol.