The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

By the end of the 1880s the cattle companies were reeling, the victims, as John Clay put it, of “three great streams of ill luck, mismanagement, [and] greed,” which merged to produce catastrophe. It was only a matter of time before drought, part of longstanding climatic patterns on the grasslands, cut down forage available to the excessive number of cattle dumped on the plains. The particularly harsh winter of 1886–87 on the northern plains had cut down the stressed and weakened herds like the grim reaper. The blizzards came so fast and so hard that it seemed like a two-month storm. Temperatures fell to 40 degrees below zero. Cowboys could do little but wait for spring, count the carcasses, and gather the emaciated cattle that had survived for sale on a glutted market that had little demand for more beef. This was the “Great Die-Up,” and all of it was predictable.