I’d forgotten about that while reading this thread. I heartily endorse this nomination.
I’m startled to see anyone suggest that wagon trains and cattle drives aren’t self-evident confirmation of the applicability of the concept.
These were not the classic cattle drives of the later era. Those were mostly taking cattle north from Texas to the cattle towns in Kansas along the railroad. (With starts and ends varying since other states were involved. But that’s what’s in most of the movies and books.)
There were no railroads in the 1840s along these routes. The cattle were taken west one way to be local stock. There was no national beef-packing businesses to sell them to. There were no huge ranches that were the beginnings of agribusiness. All that was about 30 years later.
If wagon trains are all you require, then the west started in the 18th century with the advent of Canestoga wagons.
I agree.
As for the beginning of the “Wild West,” that probably started with the discovery of gold in California.
This is probably really the answer we’re looking for, combined with the wide spread of the railroads. The West was pretty well settled fairly early on, but the open range, with large scale cattle drives, and the cow towns that catered to the cowboys on these cattle drives were effectively ended with the invention and widespread adoption of barbed wire in the late 1880s/early 1890s.
So before then, you had cowboys driving cattle over the open range from West and South Texas all the way up to central Kansas, or from places further West to other railheads closer to Chicago, and all the lawlessness that the railhead towns like Abilene and Dodge City had, and other cow-towns along the drive.
But… after the one-two punch of railroad expansion and barbed wire, there wasn’t any ability or need to drive cattle a long way, and cattle drives were more from the local ranch to the local railhead- a much shorter distance. This effectively killed the idea of the “classic” cowtown and cowboy mythology.
The invention of the refrigerator car drove was the final nail in the coffin of the old cattle drives, although I think that came a little later on.
Before that, cattle had to be delivered to the Chicago packing plants live. Cattle were driven to the railroad towns (e.g., Abilene) then loaded, live, into cattle cars for transport.
Once refrigeration became possible, and once the railroads reached out more, that was no longer necessary. Cattle could be killed at slaughterhouses in the railroad towns, or even in smaller towns closer to the ranches (where cattle were now contained by that barbed wire), and the carcasses shipped in refrigerated cars to the packing plants.
For some reason, I’ve always considered 1901 to be the end of the Wild West era…though I’d go as high as 1912. That’s just my opinion. I don’t know why, but 1901 sticks out to me.