Heritage District
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth Stockyards
Cowtown's Western-heritage district: twice-daily longhorn cattle drives, a championship rodeo, honky-tonks, and Mule Alley.
The directory
America's stockyards
The American stockyard is one of the great institutions of the country's history — the place where the open range met the railroad, where cattle became commerce, and where whole cities like Chicago, Kansas City, and Fort Worth were built. This directory profiles 12 of them: the historic terminal markets and heritage districts, and the working auction markets still running today.
Texas & the Southwest
2 stockyardsFort Worth and the Oklahoma City cattle markets.
The Midwest & Mississippi Valley
5 stockyardsChicago, Kansas City, St. Louis and the Ozarks.
Historic Stockyard
Chicago, Illinois
Union Stock Yards (Chicago)
The most famous stockyards in the world — Chicago's 'Hog Butcher for the World,' the birthplace of industrial meatpacking (1865-1971).
Historic Stockyard
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City Stockyards
For a century the nation's second-largest stockyards, in the West Bottoms - home of the American Royal and the Kansas City strip steak.
Working Livestock Market
Carthage, Missouri
Joplin Regional Stockyards
One of the largest cattle auction facilities in the country, aggregating the Ozarks' small herds into truckload lots at its Carthage sale barn.
Historic Stockyard
St. Joseph, Missouri
St. Joseph Stockyards
A major Missouri River terminal market for 134 years (1887-2021) - once the fifth-largest livestock market in the country.
Historic Stockyard
National City, Illinois
National Stock Yards
The St. Louis-area yards and their company town - the mid-century 'Hog Capital of the Nation,' now largely vanished.
The Great Plains & Mountain West
4 stockyardsOmaha, Sioux City, Denver and the video-auction era.
Historic Stockyard
Denver, Colorado
Denver Union Stockyards
The Rocky Mountain region's great cattle hub and, since 1906, home of the National Western Stock Show - still held every January.
Historic Stockyard
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha Stockyards
The Union Stockyards of Omaha overtook Chicago in 1955 to become the largest livestock market in the United States.
Historic Stockyard
Sioux City, Iowa
Sioux City Stockyards
At its peak among the largest livestock markets on earth, moving 3.7 million hogs in a single year before closing in 2002.
Video Auction
National (Brush, Colorado)
Superior Livestock Auction
The pioneer of the video cattle auction (since 1987): cattle are filmed on the ranch and sold as load-lots to buyers bidding from anywhere.
The South
1 stockyardKentucky and the cattle country east of the Mississippi.