Chisholm Trail

 

route over which vast herds of cattle were driven from Texas to the railheads in Kansas after the Civil War. Its name is generally believed to come from Jesse Chisholm, a part-Cherokee trader who, in the spring of 1866, drove his wagon, heavily loaded with buffalo hides, through the Indian Territory that is now Oklahoma to his trading post near Wichita, Kans., the wheels cutting deep ruts in the prairie. These marked a route followed for almost two decades by traders and by drovers bringing cattle to shipping points and markets in Kansas. Hundreds of thousands of Texas longhorns were driven north annually, following the Eastern and Western trails in Texas to the Chisholm Trail, which became celebrated in frontier lore and cowboy ballads. With the development of railroads and the introduction of wire fencing, the trail fell into disuse, although traces of it can still be seen.

Bibliography

See studies by W. Gard (1954) and B. J. Fletcher (1968).

The Chisholm Trail was a route used in the late 19th century in the Western United States for cattle drives, the movement of cattle overland. The trail stretched from southern Texas across the Red River to Abilene, Kansas, and was used to drive cattle northward to the railhead of the Kansas Pacific Railway, where they were shipped eastward.

The trail is named for Jesse Chisholm who had built several trading posts in what is now western Oklahoma before the American Civil War. He never drove cattle on the trail, and he died in 1868.

In 1866, cattle in Texas were worth only $4 per head, compared to over $40 per head in the North and East, because lack of market access during the American Civil War had led to increasing number of cattle in Texas.

In 1867, Joseph G. McCoy built stockyards in Abilene, Kansas. He encouraged Texas cattlemen to drive their herds to his stockyards. The stockyards shipped 35,000 head that year and became the largest stockyards west of Kansas City, Kansas.

O. W. Wheeler and his partners used the Chisholm Trail to bring a herd of 2,400 steers from Texas to Abilene in 1867. This herd was the first of an estimated 5,000,000 head of Texas cattle to reach Kansas over the Chisholm Trail.^[1]

Route

Today, most historians consider the Chisholm Trail to have started at the Rio Grande or at San Antonio, Texas. From 1867 to 1871, the trail ended in Abilene. Later, Newton, Kansas, and Wichita, Kansas, each served as the end of the trail. From 1883 to 1887, the end of the trail was Caldwell, Kansas.

In Texas, there were hundreds of feeder trails heading north to one of the main cattle trails. In the early 1840s, most cattle was driven up the Shawnee Trail. The trail was previously used by Indian hunting and raiding parties; it went north from Austin through Waco and Fort Worth. The trail crossed into Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) near Red River Station (in present-day Montague County, Texas) and entered Kansas near Caldwell. The trail through Oklahoma followed generally the route of US Highway 81.[1]

Challenges

By 1853, cattle were being driven into parts of Missouri, where farmers began blocking herds and turning them back because the Texas longhorns carried ticks that caused diseases in other types of cattle. Violence, vigilante groups, and cattle rustling caused further problems for the drivers. By 1859, laws were passed preventing the cattle from being driven through those areas. By the end of the Civil War, the bulk of the cattle was being moved up the western branch of the Texas Road, which joined the Chisholm Trail at Red River Station in Montague County, Texas.

The importance of cattle drives began to diminish in 1887 with the arrival of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad in Texas.

On the long trips the cattlemen would have a lot of difficulties. The trips took about two to three months. They had to cross major rivers like the Arkansas and the Red, and innumerable smaller creeks, plus the topographic challenges of canyons, badlands, and low mountain ranges. The weather was less than ideal. In addition to these natural dangers, there were rustlers, unpacified Native Americans (Oklahoma at that time was Indian Territory, governed from Fort Smith, Arkansas), and the natural contrariness of the half-wild Texas longhorn cattle themselves, which were prone to stampede with little provocation.

Legacy

Red River (1948), directed by Howard Hawks, is a fictional account of the first drive, in 1865, along the Chisholm Trail. The trail is the subject of a country song, Old Chisholm Trail. Among those who have covered the song are Gene Autry, Girls of the Golden West, Michael Martin Murphey, Tex Ritter, and Roy Rogers.

There is also an intermediate school in Keller, Texas named after the trail, named "Chisholm Trail Intermediate School".

Chisholm Trail Heritage Center, located in Duncan, Oklahoma, is an interactive museum dedicated to the history of the Chisholm Trail. It also has a large monument depicting a scene from the Chisholm Trail cattle drive as well as a Chisholm Trail walkway. [2]

References

• Tennant. H.S. "The Two Cattle Trails", Chronicles of Oklahoma 9:4 (December 1931) 84-122 (accessed August 16, 2006). (and map)

1. ^ Worcester, Donald E. "Chisholm Trail", Handbook of Texas-Online (accessed August 16, 2006).

External links

• History on the trail from the "Kansas Heritage Group"
• Oklahoma Historical Society Page on the Chisholm Trail by Steven D. Dortch
• Chisholm Trail from the Handbook of Texas Online
• [Maps of the trail]

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