The Great Range Wars: Violence on the Grasslands

by Harry Sinclair Drago

Harry Sinclair Drago writes with authority and a sense of drama about the bloodiest range conflicts in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana late in the nineteenth century. He details the background and events surrounding the Lincoln County War of New Mexico (1878–81), a violent struggle for economic supremacy between cattle barons and merchants; the ironically named Pleasant Valley War of Arizona (1886–92), a conflict between cattlemen and sheepmen complicated by personal vendettas and old family rivalries; and the Johnson County War of Wyoming (1892), a folly that turned bloody when big cattlemen rode against suspected and known thieves with orders to shoot.

 

These pages are filled with some showy cowmen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving; the Grahams and Tewksburys, western counterparts of the Hatfields and McCoys; William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid, who cut a swath in the Lincoln County War; and Ella Watson, said to have been the notorious Cattle Kate Maxwell, after she was lynched for cattle rustling.

323 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting compendium of brief histories about the expansion of the cattle industry and the feuds that often wracked the range country. Any subject here could be researched in much more depth, but this is a good primer if you want to understand the basic dynamics of a variety of violent outbreaks.

Includes accounts of the Lincoln Co War, the Pleasant Valley War, the Fence War of Texas, the lynching of Sheriff John Larn, various Montana vigilante movements, and the Johnson Co. war in Wyoming.

[Thora Hrafnsdottir · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author has an enjoyable reading style and I will be looking for more of his books. This one covers information from Arizona, Texas, Wyoming and Montana in specific, none of which I'd been familiar with before this. Interesting reading, glad I picked this up on a library visit.

[Kjeld Mikkelsen · Rating 3 out of 5]