The cowboy's life and work

Cattle often wander many miles over the open range in search of food, so the cattle owners used "branding" or burning marks into the hide of each cow to identify their property. Each ranch had its own distinctive brand. Some brands were simply the owner's initials like the "JT" brand. Other ranchers placed a line (usually called a bar) under their initials like the BQ, which became known as the famous "Bar B Q" brand. A letter tilted to one side was known as "lazy", so a tilted J became the "Lazy J" brand. A curved line under the letter was called "rocking", so a T over a curved line became the rocking T brand. The ranchers jealously guarded their proprietary brands and men were sometimes shot or hanged for stealing cattle and altering the brands.

Most of the year, the cattle wandered over the open rangeland and required little care. Each spring, after the cows gave birth, it was necessary to find all the new calves (called dogies) while they were still with their mothers, and to brand each of them to establish their proper ownership. During this "spring roundup", many cowboys searched the open range on horseback for mother cows with new calves and herded them all into temporary branding pens. The cowboys then roped each calf, quickly applied the ranch brand and released it back to its mother.

The big cattle drives are gone
During the mid-nineteenth century, very few railroads extended into the western territories, and none reached the open rangelands. At least once a year, the cowhands on a ranch rounded up all of the cattle ready for market and herded them over mountains and across deserts to the nearest railroad terminal. Saint Louis, Kansas City, Abilene and Dodge City were some of the famous railheads for cattle shipment. The "cattle drive" was often a long strenuous journey, that lasted many weeks and employed dozens of cowboys along with a "chuck wagon" or mobile kitchen. Sometimes, the cowhands drove several thousand cattle hundreds of miles to the railhead.

By the early twentieth century, railroads extended into even the remotest areas of the west and the open rangeland was divided into private parcels of land. Today, four-wheel-drive vehicles have replaced most of the cowboy horses, and cattle drives are done with eighteen-wheel trucks. There are still a few working cowboys out west, but not nearly as many. Unlike the rhinestone cowboys, working cowboys usually wear plain work jeans, a beat-up pair of work boots and a dusty, well-worn, ten-gallon hat.