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The Story
The cowboy myth says it was all grit and open range: noble ranchers, hardworking cowhands, civilizing a wild frontier. The truth is messier.
In this episode, we trace who actually ran Wyoming in the late 1800s, and the answer isn't "cowboys." It's a railroad, a small circle of cattle barons, and two senators, nicknamed "the Cheyenne Ring", who answered to both at once. We follow the Wyoming Stock Growers Association's reach across state lines, all the way to Custer County, Nebraska, where the same fight over land and power played out fourteen years earlier: a shooting, a revenge killing, and a conviction that didn't stick.
This is Part One of a two-part story. Part Two picks up later this month, where we find out how the location of Nebraska's capital city is connected to this same story.
1884 Wyoming Stock Growers Association Broadside
Francis E. Warren, Wyoming’s first governor, then almost immediately, a U.S. senator, too. At the same time.
Joseph M. Carey, the other half of ‘the Cheyenne Ring’, Warren’s partner representing the Union Pacific and the cattle ring at once.
The Johnson County Invasion force, photographed in May 1892
Cattle grazing on Old Brighton Ranch, 1892
For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram.
Want to learn more?
Butcher, S.D. Pioneer History of Custer County, Nebraska. Broken Bow, 1901.
Hewitt, William L. “The ‘Cowboyification’ of Wyoming Agriculture.” Agricultural History 76, no. 2 (2002): 481–94.
Miller, Michael M. “Cowboys and Capitalists: The XIT Ranch in Texas and Montana, 1885–1912.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 65, no. 4 (2015): 3–28.
Hansen, Peter A. “Still Controversial: The Pacific Railroad at 150.” Railroad History, no. 208 (2013): 8–35.
"1884 Round-Ups of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association." Broadside, courtesy of Tom Berry, compliments of Armour's Livestock Bureau.
Photo credits: WSGA Broadside, Old Brighton Ranch (SD Butcher)- Nebraska Historical Society; Warren, Carey, Johnson County War- Wyoming State Archives