The ticks produced the famous long drive. Longhorns walked the seven hundred or more miles from southern and central Texas to Kansas, going through Indian Territory, in order to get to the railroads that had pushed their lines onto lands with few white people and were desperate for traffic. Beginning in 1867, cattle towns—Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell—grew up alongside the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Kansas Pacific, and connecting lines. Although each in turn yielded to a rival farther west when farmers arrived, their initial lifeblood was cattle.
