Texas Trails: Big Boom of 1882

The cycles of boom and bust, whether in the cattle industry or world economics, are always accompanied on one end by people who said they saw it coming all along. The signs were there, they say; anybody with one eye and half sense could have predicted it. On the other end, after the inevitable crash, the same people are busy explaining why it happened and who is to blame. It's that way now, and it was that way in 1882, when the beef market boomed as it had never boomed before. Frontier journalist Don Hampton Biggers lived through the cattle boom and bust of the 1880s. Of it he wrote: "The great boom of 1882 may be compared to an exciting election. In the beginning there were many enthusiastic wiseacres who knew all the time that the boom was sure to come, and that hereafter things would be thus or better; and when the crash came these same chaps were busy explaining why it happened." Biggers explained how by the time the 1882 cattle boom in West Texas occurred, the country and the wider world had heard stories about all the free grass available in the vast expanses of the West. With railroads opening up the area to travelers of all stripes, people descended on the area with visions of being a "cow person." Europeans, primarily from England, came to see for themselves this land of sunshine and grass, where the skies were not cloudy all day (during droughts, especially) and seldom was heard a discouraging word, mainly because there were few humans on the land, and thus very little speech of any kind. These investors and adventurers hit West Texas at a good time. Rainfall had been decent. Water and grass were sufficient, if not downright abundant. This was a land where many cows could graze until their hearts were content and they became fat enough for slaughter. The investors came, they saw, they bought. The boom was under way...more