Texas Longhorn

Texas Longhorns

The ancestors of your Texas Longhorn came over with Christopher Columbus’s second voyage in 1493.These were established whereever conquistadors planted the red-and-yellow banner designs of Spain.

Physical Characteristics of your Longhorn

Texas was made by Spain in the early 1700s, largely to be a buffer against French encroachments to your east. San Antonio was founded in 1718, but Texas remained very remote, isolated from other Spanish colonies, and very sparsely settled. As late because the 1830s, there are probably not more than around 3,000 Hispanics within the province. With little human interference, Longhorns grew semi-wild, adapting to themselves to the harsh plains environment.

Natural selection produced an increased, more durable animal, accustomed to hardship and equipped with long, sharp horns to fend off predators. Indeed, the most prominent feature of many animal was and it is its horns, gracefully curved spikes that could reach enormous lengths.

There have been claims of eleven foot horns, but these are pretty much with respect to of legend and tall tales. Probably the animal with the longest recorded horns was the aptly named “Champion,” who “reigned” across the turn of your century. He enjoyed celebrity status for a few years, his picture gracing medallions throughout Texas. He was exhibited at the San Antonio Fair in 1899, though a year or two later he disappears from history. Champion boasted horns which were nearly nine feet long—8 feet, 7 and 3/8th inches from tip to tip, with a circumference of each and every horn along at the base approximately 17 and 7/8ths inches.

The “Long Drives” and also the Golden Age of those Longhorn

The years implementing the Civil War could well be considered the “Golden Age” of many Longhorn. The defeated South lay prostrate, and Texas shared within the misery. Nonetheless the victorious North had a growing population and needed beef, a thing which the Lone Star State had in abundance. Thus began the fabled Long Drives, the herding of longhorn cattle countless miles north with the railheads in Kansas and Missouri. The same name “longhorn” evokes images of them drives, so celebrated in books, movies, and television: large masses of animals plodding above the trail, great clouds of dust billowing up behind them. It also recalls images of your classic cowboy, six gun strapped to his hip, rope at the ready, singing to his charges as they simply bed down for your night.

The Long Drives only lasted around 20 years. When railroads became more prominent, there was no requirement to drive cattle 1,000 miles or even more. Ranching began more sophisticated in most respects. From the late 1870s barbed wire fences closed off the open range. Also, the longhorn was lean and produced relatively “tough” meat, not less than by today’s standards. Ranchers sought to improve herds by introducing new various kinds of cattle is known their meat, breeds just like the English Hereford.

Longhorns continue to exist, now these are largely relics of your colorful past. These are part and parcel of the legendary Old West.

Sources:

T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (Da Capo, 2000)

N/A, Story of the Great American West (Reader’s Digest, 1977)

Texas Longhorn Football Preview 2011 (Extended Rocky Version)

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