Missouri farmers had enough. Longhorns driven north on the Texas Road were infecting their cattle with a deadly disease they called Texas Fever or Redwater Fever from the red urine passed by infected cattle. Missouri cattle that acquired the disease would die within weeks. The irony was that the longhorns were not infected, serving as hosts by dropping ticks on northern pastures, but immune to the very disease they carried, Yet, now in 1853, huge herds were still headed north to railheads, their owners motivated by unbelievable profits, a five dollar steer in Texas could be sold at a northern railhead for prices ranging from $65 to $90. So, taking circumstances into their own hands, Missouri farmers, some called them vigilantes, turned back a herd of 3,000.
But the profit motive was too great an incentive for Texas ranchers, herds kept coming and incidents kept occurring. Finally, in 1855, the Missouri legislature passed the first state law banning diseased animals so Texas trail bosses simply re-routed their herds along the Kansas-Missouri border. This, in turn, created pandemonium in the Sunflower State and the Kansas legislature passed a similar law in 1859. But the law was hard to enforce and the herds kept coming. Consequently, Kansas vigilantes or Jayhawkers, took matters into their own hands. One situation, among numerous ones leading to violence, involved 16 year old trail boss, James M. Daugherty. Daugherty had managed to move his herd of 500 cows through Indian Territory without incident, but after crossing into southeastern Kansas, the situation changed dramatically. Accosted by a band of Jayhawkers dressed as hunters, his herd was stampeded and one trail hand was killed. Capturing Daugherty, they tied him to a tree with his own picket rope and whipped him with hickory switches. After they had gone, the resilient young cowboy freed himself, buried the slain man and, with the help of remaining trail hands, managed to round up 350 of his herd. Daugherty continued his journey to the Fort Scott railhead, moving the herd at night, where he sold them for a profit.
The beginning of the Civil War in 1861 effectively halted the stream of Texas longhorns, but at its conclusion in 1865, the problem of infected cattle was dramatically magnified. Texas herds had been bottled up without an outlet for over four years. Just during the spring of 1866, an estimated quarter of a million longhorns were headed north, but a bigger problem was immerging for cattle drovers further south.
Texas had morphed from a republic in 1836 to becoming a state in 1845. As a result the population swelled and land in eastern Texas that had largely been unoccupied in the 1830s were ranches and farms by the 1860s. Also, it had recently been determined that longhorns bearing the fatal tick essentially were located south of Waco. Apparently, the disease bearing ticks could not survive winters in north Texas and, as a result, farmers north of the Red River gained additional allies, northern Texas farmers and ranchers. Texas was now divided into two armed camps and no solution appeared acceptable. Southern Texans proposed a 20 mile wide passage way to Indian Territory, northerners countered with a plan to winter southern longhorns in the north to kill the invasive tick parasites. Neither of the ideas was acceptable and scattered violence resulted until the governor involved Texas Rangers who effectively ended that aspect of the disagreement.
In the meantime, two solutions were emerging, platting alternative routes to the railheads and a remedy to eradicate the infecting ticks. After the Civil War, railroads extended westward and new trails such as the Chisholm to Abilene, Kansas or the Great Western to Dodge City, unhampered by fences or farms, became available. Shortly after, scientists discovered that by immersing longhorn cattle in vats of oil, then later a solution containing arsenic, the ticks could be substantially eliminated. Despite these alternatives, the problem didn’t end anytime soon. Although moving the cattle was resolved when railroads arrived in Texas, dipping the cattle was an added expense and slow in being accepted. For example, by 1917 there were more than 700 dipping vats in Oklahoma but eradication programs faced major opposition from “anti-dipping associations.” So, the conflict continued and numerous incidents of violence were reported in Oklahoma through the early 1920s. Finally in the 1950s, a century after “Texas Fever” became a flashpoint of contention, although flaring up on occasion, the disease was declared to be under control. A reminder that occasionally there are some contemporary reminders of Echoes From The Past.