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Show on one of those snaky ponies he rode. The spurs he strapped to his boots provided another source of great pride. Many cowboys would spend several months' wages on spurs, bridle bits, boots, or hats. The cowboy did not spend all his time riding into town to play poker or drink and talk with the soiled doves; or even following and roping cattle. He had a number of menial chores like mending or building fences, chopping ice from frozen drinking ponds, shoeing his string of horses, repairing equipment, or putting up hay; but only in extreme emergencies, like when an orphan calf was hungry, would a cowboy be found milking a cow. The building of the Transcontinental Railroad required thousands of cattle: draft oxen for the building and beef for the hungry section laborers. The lack of refrigeration led enterprising cattlemen to graze stock near the railheads and deliver 15 to 20 head of beef to the railroad butchers daily. A U.S. Government policy awarded the railroad companies 20 sections of land for every mile of completed railroad beds and so railroad surveyors were constantly scouting for sections that had water, a most precious commodity in the parched desert land. During this era the present-day Fort Ranch in northern Utah's Box Elder County got its name for protecting these local water rights. This vast basin of good grass and water grazed many of the cattle that supplied railroad construction workers. When the beef were driven to the railhead butchers, one of the cowboys always stayed to guard the water holes and springs from squatters and surveyors. Butchers would jokingly ask: "Who's minding the Fort?" The place became known as Fort Ranch and the name has stuck for over a hundred years because the cowboys, in addition to their regular chores, also served as land guards and ranch soldiers for their employer. The cowboy's heyday, beginning at the end of the Civil War and lasting into the late 1880s, was short-lived. The cattle boom began to fail because of over-grazed ranges, homesteading nesters, severe winters followed by drought, and over-production without a market. Thousands of long horns, like the buffalo before them, were slaughtered just for the hides. Although the era of the nineteenth century range cowboy has passed, he will be remembered throughout the centuries to come. His lifestyle of strength and independence has developed into a myth that embodies the American way of life, not only for citizens of the United States, but for our neighbors throughout the world. |