Ranch hands, Glendale, 1900
Utah's livestock industry developed along lines recognizably different
from those of many western states, but it still has acquired characteristics
that clearly make it part of the western livestock tradition. Factors that
influenced this development at the outset included natural conditions and
the timing and nature of settlement. Isolated by the great canyons of the
Colorado River to the south, Utah was not heavily influenced by Hispanic
and Texas ranching customs or livestock until after 1880. By way of contrast,
however, Utah lay in the main road of the central overland migration. The
earliest Mormons brought with them Midwestern husbandry practices as well
as animals. Thus, Midwestern stock bloodlines and culture dominated Utah's
earliest livestock industry.
Nevertheless, distinctive Utah livestock practices evolved quickly. Fencing
was lacking and community herds and grounds became common. At first, rangeland
was abundant and little effort was made to lay formal claim to it. Later,
the territorial legislature granted vast tracts to prominent Mormon leaders.
Only a few of these were translated into actual titles, but they did provide
the basis for the first range practices.
Mormon herds multiplied quickly and animals continued to be imported from
other states, and by 1860 Utah was a livestock region of some importance.
A few individuals, including Salt Lake City's William Jennings, parlayed
commerce, freighting, and slaughter of animals for local markets into sizable
fortunes. Others like Alexander Topance and Ben Heywood traded for large
herds, which they then drove to both Midwest and California markets.
However, Utah was in no sense a ranch country in the pre-railroad era. Its
livestock industry had been shaped by the Mormon penchant for cooperation
and group life. People lived in towns, farmed small farms, and ran a few
cows and sheep. These animals were fed on the farm or grazed on town lands
or were part of co-op herds. The nearest thing to ranches were the herd
houses which dotted outlying parts of the central valleys. The difference
between farm stock and range stock was blurred. Mountain ranges for grazing
were used first by town sheep pools and summer dairies staffed by women
and children. Although cooperation was common in the cattle industry throughout
the West, Mormon pools differed in the great number of farm-based owners
and the small number of animals owned by each operator.
By the late 1870s a distinctive village livestock industry was firmly established
in Utah's central mountain valleys. At this point the long-horned cattle
and Hispanic traditions of the "Texas Invasion" finally began
to penetrate into Utah, superimposing ranching patterns upon the well-established
customs of the village-based livestock industry.
To some degree, this change was reflected in growing livestock numbers.
The upswing began first in cattle, which in 1885 numbered about 200,000.
This number increased to 356,600 in 1895. Thereafter, pressured by sheep
and by adverse weather and markets, cattle numbers barely held their own
until 1905. Encouraged by Forest Service policy, they then increased to
about 412,000 in 1910 and to 505,000 by the end of World War I.
After slow beginnings, sheep numbers also increased rapidly. By 1885 the
territory supported one million head, and by 1890 about 1,500,000. By the
turn of the century the tally skyrocketed to 3,818,000. In the decade that
followed, with drought, slow markets, and Forest Service policy prompting
the trend, the number declined to 2,740,000. Thereafter, sheep numbers held
at about 2,500,000 for more than fifteen years.
During this period the livestock industry prospered. Prominent ranching
families emerged throughout the state, towns grew, and the country filled
up. Strategically placed towns like Nephi and Spanish Fork took on regional
importance, and livestock were trailed out of the Great Basin portion of
Utah onto the Colorado Plateau part of the state as well as into Arizona
and other neighboring states. Particularly in the far corners of the territory,
the expanding Utah livestock culture confronted the more general ranching
frontier, as stockmen from surrounding areas extended their herds onto what
were literally the last ranges available. In the northwest area of the state,
Charles Crocker, Jr., son of the California railroad magnate, moved in tens
of thousands of California-bred stock. Across the territory, friction between
large and small ranchers in Wyoming extended into Brown's Hole and the Uinta
Basin, contributing to that area's reputation as an outlaw haven. Also,
the Arizona Strip was penetrated by far-ranging stockmen like B.F. Saunders.
But the confrontation between the pioneer Utah livestock culture and the
broader frontier ways was perhaps most apparent in southeastern Utah's San
Juan County where the Mormons worked their stock in village pools and hung
on while big outfits like the Carlisles, the Pittsburg Company, the L.C.
Company, and the Elk outfit from Texas first took advantage of virgin ranges
and then lost interest as the country was overgrazed. During this period,
Utah cattlemen adapted husbandry practices developed in Mormon villages
to ranching ways that originated in Texas and Mexico. The result was ranging
practices unique in many ways to Utah but still a part of the broader ranching
The development of Utah's grazing industry is also reflected in the growth
of the sheep industry after 1890. Utah sheep management practices were,
like those with cattle, in many respects a village development. It is significant
point that by the year 1900 sheep were crowding cattle from many Utah ranges.
The state's "crossroads of the West" location had something to
do with this, as hundreds of thousands of sheep trailed to and from neighboring
states. Even more important was the fact that desert ranges for winter grazing
were more abundant in Utah than were mountain pastures. In an era when range
rights on the public domain were held only by customary use, this led to
maximum stocking of desert winter ranges and heavy overstocking of summer
ranges. Under these conditions of declining resources, sheep competed somewhat
more efficiently than cattle. The sheep industry became important throughout
the state and the Wool Grower's Association became a potent economic and
Farming towns along the Wasatch Front and Wasatch Plateau played an important
role in this process. With more young people than the arable land and water
would accommodate in farming and lacking other opportunities, they became
sheep towns, serving as the hinges upon which grazing's seasonal rhythms
turned as sheep trailed from desert to mountain and back. In time, sheepmen
like Mt. Pleasant's John H. Seely became widely known, developing fine purebred
lines as well as grazing practices that attracted wide attention. Gifford
Pinchot employed W.C. Clos, Seely's range manager, in developing Forest
Service grazing policy. Sheepmen were also ably represented politically
by powerful senators George Sutherland and Reed Smoot.
Utah's livestock industry also contributed to range overgrazing and erosion
problems that worsened until at least the end of World War II. This dilemma
was first hinted at in the 1860s when Mormon Apostle Orson Hyde reported
that Sanpete County ranges were already "destitute of grass,"
which was either eaten or tramped out, and was often replaced by "desert
weed." By the time the transcontinental railroad arrived, observers
blamed sheep for the short grass supplies near Ogden, and by the mid-1880s
Mountain Meadows was transformed from a verdant grassland to a gully-cut
sagebrush plateau. By 1910 Sanpete Valley towns were suffering regular floods
from ranges stripped of ground cover, a problem that had extended to the
Wasatch Front by 1930. In few parts of the West was erosion more severe.
Through erosion control projects and the increased control of the Forest
Service and Bureau of Land Management, this process was reversed after 1950
as public lands clienteles broadened from the grazing interests that dominated
their use earlier, and as the development of defense and service industries
in Utah resulted in a general loss of overall importance for the grazing
From the vantage point of 1990 it is obvious that a livestock culture indigenous
to the more verdant East and Midwest was transplanted to one of the West's
most arid and fragile environments. It was modified in response to these
conditions and for a time worked well. Then, with the advent of the Texas
invasion after 1880, a more general ranging system developed, resulting
in adaptations in ranching customs and in added pressure being put on the
natural resources. Utah's core villages lent themselves to the seasonal
rhythms of summer and winter grazing, contributing to overuse of the public
domain. Finally, it took many years to bring a grazing system based on village
ownership into line with prudent resource utilization; the result was that
Utah suffered heavy erosion problems in connection with its livestock industry.
The state's livestock industry has used its resources heavily, and at times
the result has been costly. Although only a small number of people are now
involved in the livestock industry, the population at large has a deep affinity
for the heritage that livestock enterprise bequeathed to the state.
See: Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 32 (1964) featuring nine excellent
articles dealing with cattlemen and the cattle industry; Charles S. Peterson,
"Small-holding Land Patterns in Utah and the Problem of Forest Watershed
Management," Forest History, Vol. 17 (1973); "San Juan
in Controversy, American Livestock Frontier vs. Mormon Cattle Pool,"
in Charles Redd Monographs In Western History (1974).
Charles S. Peterson