Up the Trail

"Few adventures in the American West surpassed the practice, in the years soon after the Civil War, of taking herds of Longhorn cattle from Texas grasslands to Kansas. There, in towns like Abilene, Dodge City, and Wichita, buyers paid off ranchers, ranchers paid off cowboys, and railroad lines took the cattle east to the packing plants of St. Louis and Chicago. The drives covered hundreds of miles and took weeks of grueling work. They relied on extensive planning, complicated logistics, great skill, and much good luck. In Up the Trail, Tim Lehman examines this most American of industries,…