Texas Longhorn
cattle breed
The Texas Longhorn is an American breed of beef cattle, characterized by its long horns, which can span more than 8 ft (2.4 m) from tip to tip. It derives from cattle brought from the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors from the time of the Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus until about 1512. For hundreds of years the cattle lived a semi-feral existence on the rangelands; they have a higher tolerance of heat and drought than most European breeds. The coat can be of any color or mix of colors; in some 40% of the cattle it is some shade of red, often a light red.
In the twenty-first century, the Longhorn is considered a part of the cultural heritage of Texas.
History
The Texas Longhorn derives from cattle brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors from the time of the Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus until about 1512. The first cattle were landed in 1493 on the Caribbean island of La Isla Española (now known as Hispaniola) to provide food for the colonists.
Over the next two centuries, the Spaniards used the cattle in Mexico and gradually moved them north to accompany their expanding settlements. The Spaniards reached the area that became known as "Texas" near the end of the 17th century. Eventually, some cattle escaped or were turned loose on the open range, where they remained mostly feral for the next two centuries.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Texas Longhorn” is cattle breed. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Texas, Longhorn and cattle, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q390214. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1512 and 1493.
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This entry incorporates text from “Texas Longhorn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.