We spent the night in Fort Worth and started out the day at the Fort Worth stockyards. I never really knew the history of the place. We had a great guided tour that filled in a lot of the blanks. The cattle industry in Texas started right after the Civil War when somebody realized there were millions of head of longhorns out on the vast plains of Texas waiting to be rounded up. There was also a vast appetite for beef amongst those damned yankees who were willing to pay a lot of money for it. Get a cow for less than $4 in Texas and sell it for $40 at the end of the trail. Fort Worth grew up on the Chisholm Trail as a mid point more or less on the way Kansas City, Kansas where there was a rail head. The reason for the long (three month) cattle drive was a lack of railroads. The railroad came to Fort Worth in 1881. The next step was packing plants and Swift and Armour both built gigantic plants which operated into the post WW2 period.

Today there is nothing left of the business. There is a rodeo arena which is very popular. There are lots of places to buy stuff. It is a tourist attraction. Thus, we were attracted.

Twice a day they have a cattle drive. It amounts to moving 20-30 longhorns from one pen to another. The visitors gather along the route. They cows go along knowing quite well the intended destination. A good time is had by all.

Later in the day we went to the Texas Civil War Museum which was excellent. It isn't very large, but it has a lot of interesting artifacts, both north and south. There was a movie about the life of an infantryman. The most interesting part was the answer to why did the confederate soldiers fight. The film said it was not about slavery, none of those guys had slaves. It wasn't about state's rights, that was far too esoteric for them. It was a deeply held dislike of the North because they felt the yankees were taking advantage of them. Your results may vary.