History of North America

One reason for the end of western cattle bonanza was?

The invention of barbed wire.

Before barbed wire, it was difficult and expensive to fence in large areas of land. This meant that ranchers could only graze their cattle on public land. However, the invention of barbed wire in 1874 made it much easier and cheaper to fence in land, which allowed ranchers to privatize their land and exclude other ranchers from grazing their cattle on it. This led to a decline in the open range cattle industry and the end of the cattle bonanza.