|
Texas cattlemen propose National Trail
On this day in 1884, a cattle industry convention meeting in St. Louis
passed a resolution calling upon Congress, "in the interest of cheaper
food," to build and maintain a National Trail from the Red River north
to the Canadian border. Pushed through by prominent Texas cattlemen, it
was an attempt to thwart proposed northern quarantines against Texas
cattle. Texas fever, caused by ticks indigenous to the Southwest, had
inflicted heavy losses upon the northern range-cattle industry by the
early 1880s, and these losses had caused northern cattlemen to lobby for
quarantines against infected livestock. Since it was much less expensive
for Texas cattlemen to trail their herds to northern railheads and
ranges and then ship them by rail rather than ship directly from Texas,
most Texans saw these proposed quarantines as a threat to their economic
well-being. In the wake of the National Trail proposal, however,
Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Canada passed
quarantine laws against Texas cattle, seriously restricting drives
during the regular trailing season. Finally, on January 7, 1886, Texas
congressman James Francis Miller of Gonzales introduced the National
Trail proposal in the United States House of Representatives. The
measure was blocked in the House committee on commerce by northern
cattle interests and by Texas railroads, which presumably wanted to
replace the trail with rails. The failure of the National Trail, the
northern quarantines, and the western migration of farmers and barbed
wire sounded the death knell of trailing.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- NATIONAL TRAIL
- TEXAS FEVER
- MILLER, JAMES FRANCIS
- CATTLE TRAILING
- BARBED WIRE
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Tick fever helps end cattle-trailing era despite ranchers' efforts (1884)
- Ohioans come to the aid of Texas with "Twin Sisters" (1835)
- Delta Drilling Company founded (1931)
|
