OklahomaHorses Magazine May 2022

24 OklahomaHorses • May/June 2022 stockyards and meatpacking plants. Those purebred cattle often brought in much higher prices at sales and produced better-quality meat for the packers. By the 1920s, Oklahoma cattlemen regularly held auctions to sell registered bulls to improve the growing number of commercial herds. Cattle Follow the “Gasoline Trail” Boom-and-bust cycles continuously battered the cattle industry, which initially had come to Indian Territory during the era of Indian removal. The area that is now Oklahoma witnessed millions of cattle cross the open prairie during the great cattle drives along the Shawnee Trail, Chisholm Trail, and Western Trail. Despite droughts, depression, harsh winters, and other difficulties, Oklahoma has played a pivotal part in America’s beef industry. It has inspired nov- els, movies, and musicals. By the middle of the twentieth century, new technology had revolutionized the cattle industry. Significant improvements in the transportation network meant cattle often traveled along the “gaso- line trail” rather than by hoof. By the 1950s, ranchers began to rely on tractors, trailers, trucks, and other modern conveniences to help turn a profit. Ranchers still needed to spend countless hours with herds despite those improvements, however. Today, Oklahoma ranks second in the nation in beef cattle and calf production, with about 5,300,000 head of cattle in the state. Cattle graze at the E. K. Giles Ranch near Coalgate, Indian Territory, in 1905. Left, this broadside advertises the opening of the Unassigned Lands in Oklahoma for settlement in the first land run, on April 22, 1889. Beginning that year, large swaths of land were opened to settlement, breaking up the vast open prairie that large ranches had used for grazing cattle.