<P> Events intended to promote the western lifestyle may incorporate cattle drives . For example, the Great Montana Centennial Cattle Drive of 1989 celebrated the state of Montana's centennial and raised money for a college scholarship fund as 2,400 people (including some working cowboys), 200 wagons and 2,800 cattle traveled 50 miles in six days from Roundup to Billings along a major highway . Similar drives have been sponsored since that time . </P> <P> The cowboy's distinctive working gear, most of it derived from the Mexican vaquero, captured the public image . High - crowned cowboy hat, high - heeled boots, leather chaps, pistol, rifle, lariat, and spurs were functional and necessary in the field, and fascinating on the movie screen . Increasingly the public identified the cowboy with courage and devotion to duty, for he tended cattle wherever he had to go, whether in bogs of quicksand; swift, flooding rivers; or seemingly inaccessible brush . He rode with lightning and blizzard, ate hot summer sand, and was burned by the sun . Theodore Roosevelt conceptualized the herder as a stage of civilization distinct from the sedentary farmer--a classic theme well expressed in the 1944 Broadway hit "Oklahoma!"--Roosevelt argued that the manhood typified by the cowboy--and outdoor activity and sports generally--was essential if American men were to avoid the softness and rot produced by an easy life in the city . The cow towns along the trail were notorious for providing liquor to the cowboys; they usually were not allowed to drink on the trail itself . </P> <P> During three decades it had moved over ten million cattle and one million range horses, stamped the entire West with its character, given economic and personality prestige to Texas, made the longhorn historic, glorified the cowboy over the globe, and endowed America with its most romantic tradition relating to any occupation . </P> <P> The best known writers of the era include Theodore Roosevelt, who spent much of his inheritance ranching in the Dakotas in the 1880s, Will Rogers, the leading humorist of the 1920s, and Indiana - born Andy Adams (1859--1935), who spent the 1880s and 1890s in the cattle industry and mining in the Great Plains and Southwest . When an 1898 play's portrayal of Texans outraged Adams, he started writing plays, short stories, and novels drawn from his own experiences . His The Log of a Cowboy (1903) became a classic novel about the cattle business, especially the cattle drive . It described a fictional drive of the Circle Dot herd from Texas to Montana in 1882, and became a leading source on cowboy life; historians retraced his path in the 1960s, confirming his basic accuracy . His writing is acclaimed and criticized for both its fidelity to truth and lack of literary qualities . </P>

What transportation developments opened the west to settlement