Goodnight–Loving Trail

They still had railroads, but there were few, but the freight rates were so high, it was a bad business decision to put them on trains when you could walk them.

And if you were good at it, You walked them on the Shawnee-Sedalia Trail or you walked them on the Chisholm Trail System or you walked them on the Western Trail System or the Goodnight Loving Trail, they gained weight if you were really good at it.

But that required cooperation and foresight and planning and so on.

But really to meet that demand, you had to bring the supply, which initially was northern Mexico, south Texas, and then it started to spread west.

The Chisholm and Western trails from anywhere in Texas on north through the western part of the Indian Territory entrained cattle in Kansas for the eastern feedlots.

The Goodnight Loving Trail, running west along the middle Concho River, thence north along the Pecos and on parallel to the front ranges, supplied cattle for the new ranches being opened from New Mexico to the Canadian border.

End footnote.

But such was the case, and in 1867, the Comanches even stole horses from the post herd at Fort Concho.