The Big Die-Up and Climate Change: Then, Now, and Always

 

As the Civil War drew to a close, a Texas frontier awash with millions of almost worthless, hard-twisted, wild-eyed cattle looked north to find a source of ready cash. The popular image is of the long drives toward the newly built railroads beginning to stretch across the middle plains of Kansas where a $4 Texas bovine would bring $30 to $40 for shipment back to more eastern slaughterhouses.

And it is certainly an accurate image since thousands of Texas cattle made their way to a series of Kansas railheads beginning with Abilene in 1867 and stretching to Dodge City later on. But many didn’t stop there and were headed north for the northern ranges. In fact, the first of these post-Civil War herds to land on the northern plains to be grazed was driven to Montana in 1866 by Nelson Story who used his earnings from a gold strike to outfit a Texas herd that would become both food for miners and seed stock for one of the first cattle ranches in Montana.

By the early 1870s, many Texas cattlemen were driving herds on northward to fatten on the grass of the open prairies beyond Kansas. For the most part, the traditions of an open range applied and many considered it “free grass.” By the mid-1870s the Texas Panhandle had been opened to cattle by Charles Goodnight. Although Goodnight did not believe in a “free grass” approach, he did break ground on an innovation that greatly added to the boom on the more northern ranges – foreign investment. His Panhandle JA ranch was possible because of the major investor, aristocrat John Adair (hence the JA brand). Goodnight put his faith in land ownership and the improvements and responsibilities that came with it, so he expanded the legal boundaries of the JA whenever possible as well as using long-term leases of state-owned lands.

But that was not the rule throughout most of the northern Great Plains. For the most part, it was open range grazing with little or no improvements. The 1870 tax assessments for Wyoming Territory showed a total of 8,143 head of cattle on the rolls. By 1880, the number was 521,213. And there were like numbers stretching from there to Montana, through Nebraska and into the Dakotas.

One of the results from all that “free grass” was overgrazing since there was little or no control on it, making long-range planning impossible. The native grasses of these plains are hardy but like most of us need recovery time. As great as the wandering buffalo herds of the pre-1870s were they tended to graze heavily and move on. After close to a decade of steady abuse, the ability of the ranges to recover in a season was stretched greatly.

On top of this came a very natural factor, drought. A great many of the northern ranches began during a comparatively wet period. As surprising as it may seem to some, there were severe swings in weather patterns before wide use of the internal combustion engine. Actually, a dry period was much more the norm for these central, high plains. And so were harsh winters (and still is).

The winter of 1885-86 was a hard one with plenty of heavy snow. But it would seem mild before another year passed. The heavy snows were followed by a dry spring and blistering summer which saw water sources dry up and the overgrazed grass fail to regrow. Wildfires burned some of the dried grass that was there.

The snow began to fall in by mid-November of 1886 and in many parts of the northern range fell every day through December. Then the temperatures spiked as high as 50 degrees giving some hope for an early thaw. But the melting snow only formed a sheet of ice when it again went below zero, creating an icy crust that had to be broken through after hungry animals had dug into the new snows in search of food.

By this time, the south plains ranchers had strung an inconsistent network of fences known as “drift fences.” They intended to simplify spring roundups and the sorting of cattle by owner. Since cattle had a natural tendency to drift toward the south on the open ranges during the winter, the fences were supposed to keep the cattle of a general area more or less in the correct region. By the beginning of 1887, most of these were buried in snow and cattle drifting southward ran into the hidden barriers. Cowboys rode the stretches of fence and cut wire to let the cattle through but many never found the opening. By spring, thousands upon thousands would be found dead along the drift fences. Many Panhandle ranches put their losses at 75 percent. Many on the ranges north of there would have happily settled for that.

The time surrounding this harsh winter quickly became known across the prairie as the “Big Die-Up.” But what resulted from it was much more than the carcasses of what may well have been a million head of cattle. It changed the nature of ranching on the Great Plains.

Goodnight’s JA ranch certainly had its losses in that frozen period. But he had invested both capital and labor in digging dirt tanks, building dams and trying to control water sources as well as managing grazing on a ranch that was surely vast by some standards but had been divided for grazing rotation. His range had been better preserved but he was still taught a harsh lesson about the need for cutting prairie hay for winter feeding.

By 1900, there were still large ranches on the plains but they were run differently and there were many, many smaller ones which could be more closely managed. The Big Die-Up didn’t kill ranching on the Great Plains. It improved it. It forced changes, adaptations.

Nature has always been ever-changing, unpredictable and often harshly cruel. Man’s greatest asset in dealing with it has been adaptability. It is what has caused him to survive and then to prosper regardless of the surprises or turns of that ever-changing natural world.

That great intellect Walter E. Williams recently wrote a piece in which he made the point that the natural world is anything but fragile. It is tough and resilient.

Climate change is one of the most meaningless terms that can be imagined simply because earthly climate has always been under constant change and, I suspect, always will be. By the relative standards of history, it has not been that long ago that icy glaciers reached southward to cover almost half of what is now the United States. There was a time when the region now known as the Sahara was lust. Where was a time when northern Europe was warm enough to grow the grapes for wine. There were times in the “Little Ice Age” when New York harbor froze.

All of those things changed and affected the lives and lifestyles of the humans caught in them. But human beings were able to prosper despite the whims of nature. They did so not by changing or even managing nature. They did so by adapting to it. Human life, as a part of nature, is always subject to constant change.

Perhaps the best example of the genius of the Founders/Framers is their acknowledgment of true nature, natural law, and their building of a system designed to work within it. The nature of man to be sinful while carrying the individual possibility of great nobility, the natural rights around which a just and free society must operate and the importance of individual private property and free exchange (free market capitalism) are only part of accepting the natural order of “Nature and Nature’s God.”

One of the clear distinctions between progressives (or whatever current title they are assigned) and the conservative mind is their view of that natural order. They seek to control with self-anointed importance a nature that they are supposed to learn from, embrace, and adapt to. To them, rights can be created as time and desires evolve. Nature itself, of both earth and man, can be managed with the insight of experts.

The conservative mind realizes that man is subject to nature, not the other way around. The only nature man has control over is his own. He can individually tap that noble potential within himself. It is a potential placed there by a hand that is both outside of and above nature. That hand, that force, is the only thing that can be outside and above nature and it is divine. Most of us simply call it God.

The almost childish notion that man can control climate or that he can even define the ideal climate is a denial of what has proven to be one of his greatest assets, the ability to adapt. If a thousand-mile ice sheet has not destroyed man, a couple of degrees one way or another won’t either. There is plenty of both real science and history to discount the false panic of those who really are talking about control, not necessity. And they are not talking about controlling nature. They are talking about controlling men.

Man’s relationship with nature is the one given by that divine hand. It is one of stewardship. And, yes, that stewardship involves use. Man has not changed the natural windy, dry climate of the Great Plains. But he has adapted to its features. That trademark wind can turn blades which pump water from deep underground to create food for man and animal alike. The crude oil naturally produced and trapped by the rocky layers resulting from the endless climate changes of the centuries can be released to fuel an ever improving lifestyle for millions of people. The short grass prairies can put millions of pounds of good protein on tables all over the globe while actually improving themselves. Forests can supply wood to a growing population and be replanted to actually increase in size and quality. The North American whitetail deer population can be hunted and harvested by millions of hunters each year and still have a higher estimated number than at the time of Columbus.

These and thousands of other examples demonstrate not changes to nature but adaption to it. And with those adaptions, both man and nature have benefited.

There will be earthquakes. Volcanoes will erupt. Twisters will tear across the plains. There will be floods. Lives have been saved and even improved because men have turned their minds to adapting to those certainties, not preventing them.

One day the Yellowstone region of the United States will literally blow up in an eruption from the huge molten cavity below it. In my simple mind, this will have more impact than an inch or two of sea level. Those who are really concerned with the prevention of natural disasters might best turn their attention that direction.

Within the last few days, much of that same region that survived the Big Die-Up was blasted with a last-grasp-of-winter blizzard of huge scale. The additional feet of snow on top of an already large winter snowfall has resulted in massive flooding. For the most part, that country had just begun to catch a breath after a long session of around-the-clock nights of calving and winter hay feeding. There will be crops lost and unplanted. There will be roads and infrastructure to be rebuilt. There will be loans to be met regardless of weather’s sudden turns. Homes will be cleaned up, in some cases rebuilt and some will be lost. And both nature and man will continue.

What the progressive mind does not grasp (or at least does not want others to grasp) is that the nature of both the world and of man is out of their control. Those things natural do not change with the times. They endure. They are like that hand, that force, which created them, eternal.

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  1. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    That great intellect Walter E. Williams recently wrote a piece in which he made the point that the natural world is anything but fragile. It is tough and resilient.

    A great post. This sentence above is something I wish the left would grasp. Nature will bury Man’s efforts to tame it every time. Ask any archaeologist about the Mayan ruins reclaimed by the jungle, or the ancient Sumerian city of Kish, buried under desert sands. The Great Sphinx in Egypt lay buried for thousands of years before it was discovered by Napoleon’s army.

    But of course saving the Earth isn’t the real goal of Environmentalism, which is nothing more than a new home for socialism and a way to bring it about.

    ……

     

    The ancient city of Kish, which was discovered in the ’20s and is now buried once again (take that, Man!):

    The Sumerian city of Kish, partially excavated by British archaeologists 
    between 1923-1929, is now again covered in sand 
    [Credit: Osama S. M. Amin/Flickr]

    • #1
  2. EODmom Coolidge
    EODmom
    @EODmom

    I love this piece. @byolesummers, you’ve really captured the wide open Wild West. I love it. 

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  3. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics at work again.

    • #3
  4. Danny Alexander Member
    Danny Alexander
    @DannyAlexander

    Apologies for being persnickety…

    At one point in time, the Sahara was “lust” [sic]?  Or perhaps more likely “lush”?

    Brings to mind the linguistic muddle in “Blazing Saddles” when Cleavon Little’s character is first spotted approaching the beleaguered town of Rock Ridge:  “He says the sheriff is near!”

    • #4
  5. Ole Summers Member
    Ole Summers
    @OleSummers

    Danny Alexander (View Comment):

    Apologies for being persnickety…

    At one point in time, the Sahara was “lust” [sic]? Or perhaps more likely “lush”?

    Brings to mind the linguistic muddle in “Blazing Saddles” when Cleavon Little’s character is first spotted approaching the beleaguered town of Rock Ridge: “He says the sheriff is near!”

    I am always in need of an editor – and some humor ….. so it will  remain unchanged in honor of your persnicketiness (sic) lol

    • #5
  6. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Another great story from the West. Reminds of a story told by Sandra Day O’ Conner about her dad, and the ranch she grew up on the Arizona, New Mexico border. There is a saying about southern Arizona; When the big rain came, forty days and forty nights, southern Arizona got half an inch.

    Her dad and an Arizona farm agent devised a plan to build a small dam that could provide water that could be diverted to different parcels of land on the ranch to regrow grass and move cattle from one parcel to another. An earnest young man came out from Washington DC and demanded that that their cattle be moved to a higher range in the middle of the summer and informed her dad that the dam would have to be removed. He was told the cattle would stop moving in the heat, and no amount of effort would get them moving again. That’s exactly what happened in the attempt to move them to comply with the whiz kid’s demand. 

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  7. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    Splendid post. Thank you.

    My last narration project, currently in post-production, is the book “1889,” about the Boomer/Sooner movement, the settling of Oklahoma, and the founding of OK City. The “Big Die-Up” is mentioned prominently, as the battle between would-be settlers, cattlemen and railroad men was a major dynamic. Cattlemen had to get their herds through Indian territory (“Oklahoma” translates as “land of red men”). Many negotiated grazing leases with the tribes that supposedly controlled the land. Settlers who tried to establish themselves in spite of laws and treaties were known as “nesters” because they encircled their homesteads with circular barriers made of brush and cut trees to keep the herds from destroying their fields. The hedges resembled huge birds’ nests.

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  8. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    As for the climate change discussion, I’m old enough to remember Rachel Carson and Paul Erlich of “The Population Bomb.” I would give more credibility to their arguments about this or that apocalyptic crisis if the solution wasn’t always the same: give up the free market and let socialism save us.

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  9. PHenry Inactive
    PHenry
    @PHenry

    Has there ever been a generation that wasn’t convinced the climate challenges they faced were the worst in history? 

     

    • #9
  10. JimGoneWild Coolidge
    JimGoneWild
    @JimGoneWild

    EODmom (View Comment):

    I love this piece. @byolesummers, you’ve really captured the wide open Wild West. I love it.

    Ditto.

    • #10
  11. JimGoneWild Coolidge
    JimGoneWild
    @JimGoneWild

    PHenry (View Comment):

    Has there ever been a generation that wasn’t convinced the climate challenges they faced were the worst in history?

    I wonder what people in England thought when the Thames river stopped freezing over? Did you Brits panic? Doubtful. They were to busy fighting wars and dodging disease.

    • #11
  12. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    Excellent article, Ole Summers.  It’s funny how every time there is a drought or a flood or a wildfire, some people believe it is unprecedented.  And the fault of capitalism, of course.  If only we gave enough authority to the right left politicians, we would have a global Garden of Eden.

    • #12
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