The first stock raised in Colorado came with the arrival of the gold seekers. The cattle were to be fattened up and sold for beef to the prospectors. Many of the prospectors grew disheartened without achieving their dreamed strike, and so, turned to raising cattle. When the grazing potential was realized, cattle were bought in Texas and brought here to the Colorado Plains and Mountain Valleys to recuperate after the long journey, and before heading to market.

The first man to run cattle in the Platte Valley was John W. Iliff (Eye-lif), and he did just that; he brought up thousands of head of cattle and let them graze a couple years, and then sold them ot Eastern markets using the Denver Pacific Railroad line from Denver to Cheyenne. When Iliff died in 1878 his cattle holding was likely the largest in the state. It was said that he could travel from Julesburg to Greeley and always eat and sleep at one of his own ranches.

With the first cattle men came the first cowboys. The first were the Mexican Gauchos, giving way to young Americans the farther north the cattle were driven. One of those cowboys was Edward R. Morris. He learned to run cattle at age six in Nebraska, after his family moved from Minnesota. Morris remembered his early years as a youngster saying, “They had to put me on the horse, and then I’d stay up there till they took me off.” At the age of 20 he participated in his first roundup. “I received a card from Bill Fitch telling me the wagon was starting on a roundup south of Sedwick and for me to be there on a certain day. Well, I picked out the saddle horses, eight head and one colt, and started out across the sandhills. I figured there’d be four of us sitting around rolling cigarettes, boy was I wrong. For two hours we rode steady around that herd. About 500 steers in the day herd.” On another occasion Morris was camped about ten miles south of Atwood getting ready for another roundup when he and a couple other boys decided to head into Sterling to pass the time.

“Well, Sterling was just a cow town and Front Street was wild and wicked. We stayed ​​a little too long and when we got ready to leave we decided to wake up the town. Rather than go down the street we rode down the boardwalk on a high lope shooting out the coal oil lights along the way. George Bird had a bakery--it was a good place for us to loaf and have cookies and coffee and play cards with his kids. George Buchanan had a cigar store about where the Westerner is now. He was another guy we sure did like. We didn’t shoot out their lights, but the rest had to go.”

Roundup season usually started at the end of April and lasted till sometime in July or August when the calves started coming. Then it was time to brand them, as unbranded cattle was just what the cattle rustlers were after.

The cattle business continues on today in the feedlots and in the farmyards, and while much has changed, if you find the good fortune to be camped under a full moon in an open prairie, you can still unlock the lure that captivated cowboys like Ed Morris or John Iliff. In fact, there is great camping and stargazing at the North Sterling Reservoir where the Talking Trail continues…