The Kansas Pacific stockyards at Ellsworth were initially inadequate when Shanghai Pierce, a prominent South Texas cattleman, arrived in 1871 after finding conditions in Abilene unfavorable for marketing cattle, and he reacted angrily on seeing them. By the shipping season of 1872, the yards had expanded to several acres, with seven loading chutes that allowed eight men to load 150 to 200 rail cars per day under yard superintendent R.D. Evans, a former drover. In 1873, as competition from the Santa Fe Railway at Wichita intensified, the Kansas Pacific surveyed a more direct route from Sewell's Ranch on the Chisholm Trail, entering Kansas west of Caldwell, through Kingman, and crossing the Arkansas River at Ellinwood. The men who marketed cattle through these yards included many leading figures in the Texas cattle industry, and R.D. Hunter's 1873 partnership with Albert G. Evans in Kansas City grew into Hunter and Evans, one of the livestock industry's most influential commission houses, while they also maintained ranching operations throughout the West.