03/25/2026
Tres belle photo ...
Great photo
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14YqiZpZc6h/
Holy smokes, check out this remarkable historical photo of buffalo hides being hauled to market in Weatherford, Texas. This was taken in 1874, when Weatherford was at the edge of Anglo settlement. What strikes me is that these wagons weren’t just hauling hides, they’re hauling away the last great breath of the southern plains buffalo and a way of life that depended on them. Each wagonload represents an animal that had roamed in numbers so vast they once seemed beyond counting, now reduced to cargo, measured and sold by the pound. To the hunters it represented prosperity, but in hindsight it feels more like a ledger being closed, the end of an era, and although it must have seemed ordinary at the time, both the settlers and the Native Americans were witnessing the near-erasure of a species that had shaped the land for eons. In retrospect it's so easy for us to see. And I'm not trying to moralize or mourn, just observing that we can cause such great changes without fully understanding at the time what those changes represent, how the repercussions ripple out.
Another photo courtesy the truly outstanding archives of UTA Special Collections. Bless the archivists!
