Sheepdogs and Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of Grazing on the High Plains

Abstract

An environmental history of High Plains grazing that focused on transhumant sheepherding of New Mexico, watershed cattle ranching of the open range, and barbed-wire stock-farming of the privatized plains--all systems of agroecology practiced on and about the semiarid plains of Texas during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Drew insights from the natural and social sciences as well as from critical race theory to contextualize novel primary sources and to reexamine primary sources that environmental historians had yet to bring to bear on the field. Research focused on the financial records of the XIT ranch held in the archives of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, land records held at the General Land Office of Texas in Austin, and the trail of newspaper coverage, army records, and census documents that track the Romero family from Mora, New Mexico, to Tascosa, Texas, to Dodge City, Kansas, and back again. Corrected long-held misconceptions about Texas history.