Chapter 2: Blazing a Trail From Markets to Politics: Wyoming’s 19th Century Cattle Kings

Using the lens of productive and unproductive entrepreneurship, this chapter examines the evolution of the Wyoming cattle industry during the late 19th century. The Wyoming cattle industry began as a series of entrepreneurial ventures to service the protein needs of railroad workers building the transcontinental railroad during the 1860s. Once the railway was completed, it provided further entrepreneurial opportunity for transportation of cattle to the east. This inspired additional, yet unsustainable, ventures as cattle and entrepreneurs migrated to the territory from Texas and elsewhere. This chapter identifies triggering mechanisms that led the industry from a market entrepreneurship model to an emphasis on political entrepreneurship—a movement chiefly associated with the formation and actions of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. As the association’s political influence rose, so too did conflict between small ranching operations and larger cattle interests. This culminated in the well-known Johnson County War of 1892 in which “Big Cattle” operators and their mercenaries invaded a Wyoming county with a list of more than 50 people—alleged rustlers as well as elected local officials—to be put to death.