Giddy-up, cowboys and girls! In the Southwest during early half of the 1800s, cows were only worth 2 or 3 dollars a piece. They roamned wild, grazed off of the open range, and were abundant
Midway through the century though, railroads were built and the nation was connected. People
could suddenly ship cows in freight trains to the Northeast, where the Yankees had a growing
taste for beef. Out of the blue, the same cows that were once worth a couple of bucks were now
worth between twenty and forty dollars each, if you could get them to the train station. It became
pretty lucrative to wrangle up a drove of cattle and herd them to the nearest train town, but it was
at least as dangerous as it was profitable. Cowboys were threatened at every turn. They faced
cattle rustlers, stampedes and extreme weather, but kept pushing those steers to the train station.
By the turn of the century, barbed wire billed the open range and some may say the cowboy too,
but it was the train that birthed him.
5. Main idea related tite for the passage:
6. Summarize the passage in your own words: