Editing Cowboy (section)

===End of the open range===
{{See also|Open range}}
[[File:Chinook2.gif|thumb|''Waiting for a Chinook'', by [[Charles Marion Russell|C.M. Russell]]. Overgrazing and harsh winters were factors that brought an end to the age of the open range.]]

[[Barbed wire]], an innovation of the 1880s, allowed cattle to be confined to designated areas to prevent [[overgrazing]] of the range. In Texas and surrounding areas, increased population required ranchers to fence off their individual lands.<ref name="MaloneJ76"/> In the north, overgrazing stressed the open range, leading to insufficient winter [[forage]] for the cattle and starvation, particularly during the harsh winter of 1886–1887, when hundreds of thousands of cattle died across the Northwest, leading to collapse of the cattle industry.<ref name="Malone79">Malone, J., p. 79.</ref> By the 1890s, barbed-wire fencing was also standard in the northern plains, railroads had expanded to cover most of the nation, and meat packing plants were built closer to major ranching areas, making long cattle drives from Texas to the railheads in [[Kansas]] unnecessary. Hence, the age of the open range was gone and large [[Cattle drives in the United States|cattle drives]] were over.<ref name="Malone79"/> Smaller cattle drives continued at least into the 1940s, as ranchers, prior to the development of the modern [[cattle truck]], still needed to herd cattle to local railheads for transport to [[feedlot|stockyards]] and [[Meat packing industry|packing plants]]. Meanwhile, ranches multiplied all over the developing West, keeping cowboy employment high, if still low-paid, but also somewhat more settled.<ref>Malone, M., et al. (page number needed)</ref>