Skip to main content

Beef Industry on the Colorado Plains

Colorado’s beef industry traces its roots back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, when cowboys drove cattle across the plains in some of the most iconic imagery of the American West. However, the state’s modern beef industry did not begin…

The Great Die Up

“The Great Die Up” is one of three nicknames for the winter of 1886–87, when hundreds of thousands of cattle across the Great Plains died in harsh weather. The event changed the cattle industry forever, ending the practice of open-range grazing. Ranchers…