Today's speaker, Richard Kaan gave a fantastic history account of some of the cattle drives, from Texas up north to the rail heads. The numbers of cattle were staggering!! Most of the cattle owners were syndicates of sorts. There were thousands of cattle that were brought up to the miners in the Black Hills, many coming through Custer County near Hermosa. Wish I'd taken notes, it was very interesting. He talked about the cowboys (the name cowboy, came about because of the first cow handlers were youngsters, right after the civil war, so people started calling them "cowboys", and the name stuck) the equipment, and how they herded them going north.