Through the first half of the 1900s Beaumont was one of the most important shipping points in the Flint Hills. Each spring thousands of cattle were shipped here by rail from Texas and Oklahoma to pasture on the area's bluestem grass. The stockyards could handle 9,000 at a time. When the cattle arrived, they were counted, weighed, and then driven by horseback to pasture. By the 1950s trucks had taken over the cattle transport business. Multiple large markers to the north and east of the Beaumont Hotel convey the area's history.