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Longhorns crossing West Cherry Creek
 a few miles east of Monument, CO USA
 Texas Longhorns—Colorado’s First Cattle

By Stan Searle

Lately, there’s been a growing interest in protein-rich, grass-fed beef.  In fact, in a lot of health conscious Colorado households, “it’s what’s for dinner.”  And the experts say it is also better for you.  Besides being lower in calories, the beef that comes right off the range has a lot more of the important omega-3 fatty acids.  Cattle fed on Colorado’s grasslands, rather than in feedlots, don’t have the growth hormones that some folks would like to avoid.

So, where are the grasslands that all those protein rich critters call home?  All over Colorado and in most other Western states,“cow outfits” of every size are producing beef on grass pastures and open range, completely free of steroids in a spacious, natural environment.  The best adapted to the wide open spaces are the Texas Longhorns, the original cattle of the American West.  These historic cattle are being raised, not just for their spectacular horns and splashy colors, but for their “genetically-trimmed” lean beef.           

Their unique traits were developed over four centuries of “survival of the fittest”—thriving in the brush lands of Mexico and what was to become the Southern U.S. after the first “Spanish cattle” were brought to the Americas by Columbus on his second voyage to the New World.  The few that escaped into the wild, over time, multiplied into the millions along the Gulf Coast.  Following the Civil War, jobless young men looking for a few dollars hired out to ambitious ranchers to locate and gather the wild cattle and drive them North and East to feed a depleted nation. 

Eventually about 10 million of these bovine survivalists were driven to railheads like Dodge City, Abilene and Ogallala. Thousands more were moved by trail, train and barge in every direction, to be slaughtered for meat, hides and tallow and to stock farms and ranches from California to the Midwest and into Canada.

The first trail herd to reach Colorado—and the first beef cattle other than oxen pulling wagons—were driven across Indian Territory, through Kansas Territory and into Colorado Territory by Texas rancher Oliver Loving in 1860.  With John Dawson, he started a herd of 1,500 toward Denver, Colorado to feed miners in the area. They crossed the Red River, traveled to the Arkansas River, and followed it to Pueblo, Colorado, where the cattle wintered.  In the spring Loving sold his cattle for gold and tried to leave for Texas.  However, the Civil War had broken out and the Union authorities prevented him from returning to the South until Kit Carson and others interceded for him. 

 Following the war, famous Texas Ranger, Indian fighter and trail blazer Charles Goodnight, partnered with Loving to resume the cattle trade in Colorado.  They established a trail into New Mexico, then through Raton Pass into Colorado Territory.  The Goodnight-Loving Trail passed just east of the present city of Colorado Springs along the headwaters of Upper Black Squirrel Creek.   Crossing into the Cherry Creek drainage they followed it to Denver. Buyers of this first herd were the U.S. Army, to provision troops and Indians in New Mexico, and prominent Colorado pioneer John Iliff, who took possession of the balance of the herd at Denver.

Unfortunately, Oliver Loving died in 1867 of complications from arrow wounds suffered in an attack by Comanche braves along the Pecos River.  [As a footnote to history, the Lonesome Dove miniseries was based on Goodnight and Loving.]  Goodnight and others continued to “head ‘em north” to stock the sprawling ranches that were quickly established.  The land was free to anyone who had the cattle to eat the grass and the courage and determination to defend his holdings against rustlers, Indians and competing cowmen and sheepmen. 

Texas Longhorn cattle were uniquely suited for the miles of travel between feed and water, the harsh elements of winter and summer, and the slim pickings on big stretches of marginal land.  Four hundred years of adaptation had, through survival-of-the-fittest, produced a breed that was, and still is, genetically equipped to cope where other breeds cannot.  Among the Longhorn’s genetic traits are instinctive protection of their babies, utilization of various plants that other cattle won’t touch, disease resistance, and longevity that gives them double the productive life of other breeds.  The meat is genetically leaner, while retaining tenderness and taste.

However,  more than a special breed of cattle was spawned by the post-war expansion of open range ranching. Civil War veterans and men and boys of various ethnic and vocational backgrounds hired on to gather, drive and care for the herds being assembled.  Their best mentors in the skills of horsemanship and cattle handling were the Mexican vaqueros, the first of the special brand of men who became known as “cowboys.” 

The cowboys’ skills, hard work and bravery became legendary, the subject of thousands of yarns, books, movies, songs and poems.  Their clothing and equipment, at first improvised for function and economy, still influences fashion around the world . . . and cowboy music is popular on every continent.  The sport of rodeo, which has changed in only a few minor ways, was invented by cowboys seeking some diversion and wanting to show off the skills they used every day in roping, branding, doctoring and rescuing the Longhorn cattle, as well as mastering the wild bronco of the range.  On ranches across Colorado and the West, you can still find the American cowboy . . . and the cattle that “invented” him, the Texas Longhorn.  And that good, lean, grass fed beef?  It’s still “What’s for dinner!”
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Stanley Searle, Owner of Searle Ranches
Stan Searle, owner of Searle Ranch headquartered at Monument, has been raising registered Texas Longhorns in Colorado since 1974.  He is past president of the Texas Longhorn Heritage Foundation and the International Texas Longhorn Association.  He can be contacted via SearleRanch.com.