The open-range cattle era lasted barely a quarter century, but it left America irrevocably changed. These few decades saw the greatest boom-and-bust cycle until the Depression, the invention of the assembly line, the dawn of the conservation movement, and the birth of American legends, like the cowboy. Yet this extraordinary time has remained unexamined for decades.



Cattle Kingdom reveals how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today. The tale takes us from dust-choked cattle drives to the unlikely splendors of boomtowns like Abilene, Kansas, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. We meet a diverse cast, from cowboy Teddy Blue to failed rancher and future president Teddy Roosevelt. Christopher Knowlton shows us how they and others like them could achieve so many outsized feats: killing millions of bison, building the first opera house on the open range, driving cattle by the thousands, and much more. Cattle Kingdom is a revelatory new view of the Old West.