Contrary to popular conception, long-distance cattle driving was traditional not only in Texas but elsewhere in North America long before anyone dreamed of the Chisholm Trail. The Spaniards, who established the ranching industry in the New World, drove herds northward from Mexico as far back as 1540. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Spanish settlements in Texas derived most of their meager revenue from contraband trade of horses and cattle driven into Louisiana. In the United States, herds of cattle, horses, and pigs were sometimes driven long distances as well. In 1790 the boy Davy Crockett helped drive "a large stock of cattle" four hundred miles, from Tennessee into Virginia. In 1815 Timothy Flint "encountered a drove of more than 1,000 cattle and swine" being driven from the interior of Ohio to Philadelphia.
Earlier examples notwithstanding, Texans established trail driving as a regular occupation. Before 1836, Texans had a "beef trail" to New Orleans. In the 1840s they extended their markets northward into Missouri. During the 1850s emigration and freighting from the Missouri River westward demanded great numbers of oxen, and thousands of Texas longhorn steers were broken for use as work oxen. Herds of longhorns were driven to Chicago and at least one herd to New York.
Under Spanish-Mexican government, California also developed ranching, and during the 1830s and 1840s a limited number of cattle were trailed from California to Oregon. However, the discovery of gold in California temporarily arrested development of the cattle industry and created a high demand for outside beef. During the 1850s, although cattle were occasionally driven to California from Missouri, Arkansas, and perhaps other states, the big drives were from Texas.
During the Civil War, Texans drove cattle throughout the South for the Confederate forces. At the close of the war Texas had some 5 million cattle—and no market for them. In 1866 there were many drives northward without a definite destination and without much financial success. Texas cattle were also driven to the old, but limited, New Orleans market.
In 1867 Joseph G. McCoy opened a regular market at Abilene, Kansas. The great cattle trails, moving successively westward, were established, and trail driving boomed. Also in 1867, the Goodnight-Loving Trail opened New Mexico and Colorado to Texas cattle. They were soon driven into Arizona by the tens of thousands. In Texas, cattle raising expanded like wildfire. Dodge City, Kansas; Ogallala, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Wyoming, and other towns became famous because of trail-driver patronage.
During the 1870s the Buffalo were virtually exterminated, and the American Indians of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains were subjugated. Vast areas were left vacant. They were first occupied by Texas longhorns, driven by Texas cowboys. The Long Trail extended as far as Canada.
In the 1890s, herds were still driven from the Panhandle of Texas to Montana, but by 1895 trail driving had virtually ended because of Barbed Wire, Railroads, and settlement. During three swift decades it had moved more than 10 million head of cattle and 1 million range horses, stamped the entire West with its character, given economic prestige and personality to Texas, made the longhorn the most historic brute in bovine history, and glorified the cowboy throughout the globe.
Bibliography
Dale, Edward Everett. The Range Cattle Industry: Ranching on the Great Plains from 1865 to 1925. New ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960. The original edition was published in 1930.
Gard, Wayne. The Chisholm Trail. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954.
Hunter, J. Marvin, compiler and ed. The Trail Drivers of Texas: Interesting Sketches of Early Cowboys. 2d ed. rev. Nashville, Tenn.: Cokesbury Press, 1925.
Osgood, Ernest Staples. The Day of the Cattleman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1929. New ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Worcester, Don. The Chisholm Trail: High Road of the Cattle Kingdom. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980.
—J. Frank Dobie/F. B.
