Thus, Texas was the place to go if you wanted a good deal of fresh red meat. There was no way Texans could use - much less eat - all these cattle, even if the Atkins diet was anachronistically introduced. Epicureans can calculate how many steaks or hamburgers this equates to.

David Danborn, writing in Born in the Country, states that there were between three to five million cattle roaming Texas after the war. As ranchers were away fighting for Confederacy, herds of feral longhorn cattle multiplied on the range like, well, cattle. Supply and Demand of Beef in TexasĪfter the Civil War, Texas had a cattle problem. On the Chisholm Trail, the immortal story of the cowboy was born. In those years, between six to eight million head of cattle passed up the trail and were sold for what would be worth billions of dollars today. Used between 18, the Trail was the major thoroughfare for Texas longhorn cattle en route to markets north of the Lone Star State. The Chisholm Trail is renowned for cattle, cowboys, chuck wagons, and nearly everything iconic about the Old West.

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