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Lecture 6 "Ways and Habits of the West" deals with ranching upon the plains. The story goes that the open range cattle industry has Spanish roots. Other factors to this are a cattle surplus in Texas and Joseph McCoy saying if the ranchers drove their cattle to other locations to be shipped off by rail, there would be a pretty penny waiting for them. He connected the supply with the demand. Cattle towns began appearing all along the trails, but later they began rejecting the cattle town title and became more respectable communities. Eventually such things as slack market, barbed wire, overstocking, etc. lead to the downfall of the open range. Then the era of fencing and feedlots emerged. The ranching industry is just another area that can't escape the fact that is has adapted and evolved along with everyone and everything else.

This lecture was interesting to me because I come from a family that has cattle, and I'm from a faming/ranching community. To the north a ways from where I am from is what we call "Cowboy Country" because that really is a ranching community, but our area still has a good amount of cattle. I enjoyed the part about the cattle towns. That's how many towns got started but as time went on things like herd laws and quarantines emerged. These towns wanted to change into more respectable places. Another thing that interested me was the discussion of how many people it actually took to drive the cattle. I find it sometimes hard enough to chase 50 head of cattle with two 4-wheelers, a pickup, and the unlucky person who has to run. These guys had around 10 guys maybe more on horses who would move hundreds.