Hundreds of cowboy movies always show that at the end of the trail, the herd of cattle is driven through town to the rail yards. It's a taste of real life Belle Fourche history for Roundup crowds again this year because, in the early days, that's exactly what would happen. Roundup crowds have a chance to see that re-creation of Belle Fourche history at 3 p.m. Thursday, July 3. It's the fifth annual Roundup Downtown Cattle Drive. A perfect example of the end of trail ride past cowtown businesses came in the 1972 John Wayne classic movie The Cowboys. That's the single Hollywood production that covers a cattle drive to Belle Fourche in the late 1800s. The movie may have been a little loose with times and places, but Belle Fourche was indeed America’s biggest livestock railhead. Ranchers from the early 1890s would gather a trail crew and supply a chuckwagon for cowboy meals as they prepared to drive thousands of cattle across the prairie to market. Today’s ranchers are more likely to use trucks to move smaller groups of cattle to market throughout the year instead of a single annual herd of thousands. But short-run drives remain common in 2013 as they were in 1891 or 1911. In the early decades of Belle Fourche through the 1930s, cattle trails remained a major way to bring livestock to market. Experienced professionals such as the famed “Boss Cowman” Ed Lemmon were hired to ensure good grass and water for drives to cattle buyers and stock pens at the edge of town...more
No comments:
Post a Comment