Beef industry: Westward Expansion - Business in United States of America

Beef industry

Beef Supply and Use, 1990-2006, in Millions of Pounds

Beef industry: Rise of the Modern Industry

During the late 1860’s, however, the production of beef for commercial purposes took on a new meaning, primarily as a result of railroad construction and continued western expansion. The advent of the railroad made the transportation of livestock much easier. When the railroad reached Chicago in 1852, several different railway companies established stockyards there to facilitate the shipment of cattle eastward, and Chicago quickly became a major rail center for the industry. At this time also, a major new mode of beef production began to develop with the rise of what would come to be known as the “beef bonanza” or Cattle Kingdom in the Great Plains region. 

As the railroads pushed west and the market for beef in the eastern cities grew, the Cattle Kingdom took shape. Utilizing a style of raising cattle introduced by the Spanish in Mexico several centuries earlier, the process involved the open grazing of cattle on the plains. Large herds of a particularly hardy breed known as longhorns, which had also been introduced by the Spanish, were allowed to graze freely, watched over by individuals called by such names (depending on the region) as “cowboys,” “cowpunchers,” or “buckaroos.”

When cattle were mature enough for market, they were driven along cattle trails, some of them hundreds of miles in length, to towns along the newly constructed railroads. The individual credited with originating this system was Joseph McCoy of Illinois, who began putting it into effect during the late 1860’s, using the town of Abilene, Kansas, located on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, as his principal shipping point. For the next twenty years, this system expanded, helping create the rich cultural traditions of the Wild West that have been celebrated in Western films and novels. Terms like “roundup,” “cattle drives,” “broncobuster” (reflecting the importance of the horse as a tool of the cowboy), and “rodeo” permanently entered the American vocabulary at this time. As the economic importance of the cattle industry grew, Chicago continued to serve as a major rail terminus and processing center. The Union Stockyards built there in 1865 and the large meatpacking plants such as Swift’s and Armour’s that grew up around the stockyards brought rapid economic growth to that city.