The early farmers had their herds and flocks, but paid little attention to quality or breeds. In time it was found that better grades were more profitable, and the early range cattle and the scrub stock of the pioneers have disappeared.
Present Day Stock Farm.
The Cowboy was a Familiar Figure in Kansas Forty Years Ago.
When the Union Pacific Railroad was built the cattlemen of Texas began driving their cattle into Kansas in order to ship them to market. For many years Abilene was the shipping center. When the Santa Fe Railway was built, Wichita, being farther south, became the chief shipping point. As the country became more thickly settled the cattle trade was pushed farther west. Finally it reached Dodge City which remained the shipping center for many years. The building of railroads into the Southwest made it unnecessary for the Texas cattlemen to drive their stock to a Kansas shipping point, and about 1885 the practice was abandoned. While the trade flourished, the cowboy, with his boots and spurs and broad-brimmed hat, was a familiar figure on the plains of western Kansas; but as the settlers turned the grazing land into farms the cowboy moved farther west.
In Full Bloom.
Horticulture. Another Kansas industry is horticulture, the cultivation of fruits. The first orchard in Kansas was planted at Shawnee Mission in 1837. Very little tree planting was done, however, until after the Civil War, and even then the Kansas plains were for many years regarded as unfit for fruit growing. The early crops were small but of a very fine quality, and Kansas apples won the gold medal at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. This aroused much enthusiasm, and during the next few years many thousands of fruit trees were planted, but most of them proved worthless because the varieties were not adapted to conditions in this State. Long years of hard work and patient effort were required to secure the knowledge necessary to make a successful fruit state of Kansas. To-day there are many fruits grown here, but it is the Kansas apple that is famous. Scarcely a farm in the eastern and central parts of the State is without its orchard, and there are a number of commercial orchards that are making horticulture an important industry in Kansas.
