This is a special year for our country and lots of opportunities to learn early history about the forming of our country as we know it today. Of course there is much to learn about how our nation began but there are other stories that followed those early years. One of those I learned about last week when our family visited the once very active cowtown, Abilene, Kansas.

We visited Old Town in Abilene where you have the opportunity to step back in time to a colorful time in Kansas history. For instance, in one of the buildings we learned about Long Horn cattle.

They were an important part of the cattle drives from Texas to railheads in Kansas. Are they native to Texas and later Oklahoma and Kansas? If not, how did they get here? In one of the buildings in Old town we got our answer. The first cattle to arrive in North America were brought to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, today known as Haiti and the Dominican Republic by Christopher Columbus in 1493. Spanish explorers brought cattle to mainland North America in the 1520s. The story of the Longhorn is a “survival of the fittest” tale. Many of the cattle brought by the Spanish were left to fend for themselves on the open range where the animals reverted to being semi-wild. Environmental conditions in Spanish controlled areas of North America were much harsher than conditions they were accustomed to in Europe. Only the strong survived to pass their genetic traits on to their offspring.

The result of this nearly 400 years of natural breeding was the Texas Longhorn, the only breed of cattle adapted to North America without human help.

The Texas Longhorn is a special breed for a number of reasons. They thrive in conditions which kill other breeds. Longhorns are resistant to disease and can give birth to calves in the wild without medical aid. This is a problem for many other breeds. The Longhorn is a strong animal with remarkable endurance capable of being driven long distances in herds.

Had the Texas Longhorn not naturally adapted to the tough North American environment, large scale cattle drives of the latter half of the 19th century may not have been possible. Without the cattle drives of the last half of the 19th century, the story of the American West would be quite different from the one we know today.

Source: sign in a window in Old Abilene Town