Killing Storms

Blizzards of the 1880’s

One of the main factors in the decline of the cattle industry in specific areas of the Great Plains occurred from climatic change. Killer blizzards over the years, followed by droughts in the summers, and overgrazing of the native grasses left many ranches in ruins. Thousands of cattle were destroyed in the storms, a couple of hundred cowboys were stranded and lost their lives, and no one bothered to count the number of Native Americans who died.

Driven by northern winds, the cattle simply started walking south. If they were on the open range they wandered into southern Kansas and Oklahoma. After the thaw, ranchers found them piled up against fences and frozen on top of each other. Passengers on trains were stranded along tracks buried in deep snows at the mercy of the weather for days. Life on the Great Plains stopped until the next thaw. The new cattle kingdom moved from the Great Plains into the Dakota Territory, Wyoming, Colorado and Montana and was funded by foreign interests in many instances.

The following could be useful for additional research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolhouse_Blizzard
http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/blizzard-of-1886/119
http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/wdl/Climate/cok/index.asp?page=253