The realigned route led north past Monument Hill into Kansas, more or less paralleling present-day U. Highway Drovers used it primarily until , when the trail again shifted west, this time bound for Dodge City. Map by Joan Pennington. Not until did maps label the trail past Monument Hill the Chisholm Trail.
Someone, it seems, had extended the trail. In the mids Oklahoman P. Ackley, an aging former drover, announced his intention to turn the old Chisholm Trail into a highway and install commemorative markers along the route. As a result, by the length and course of the Chisholm Trail had changed to largely match those of the Meridian Highway. That year the Texas Highway Commission approved a motion to allow the Chisholm Trail Association to map a course and install markers, pending approval of the route and marker design by the commission or state engineer.
After the project fell by the wayside due to disagreements and the Great Depression, Ackley began his own private project and installed an unknown number of Chisholm Trail markers from Texas north to the Canadian border. Some of his markers, which bear a distinctive Texas Longhorn insignia, still remain, while others have been replaced or removed.
For clues to the original route, one must scour the record a half-century earlier. Given the claim the Chisholm Trail name had come into common usage during the period, one would expect to find mentions of it throughout these accounts.
Just the opposite is true, with scarcely a mention of the Chisholm or any other trail by name. It seems cattlemen of the era tended to name a trail according to its point of origin or destination, if they named it at all. It appears the Chisholm Trail name only fell into common usage after , well after the cattle drive era and in keeping with the name change on period maps. While some old drovers certainly used the term to describe the trail through Texas, as many if not more disavowed the Chisholm label on the Lone Star section of the trail.
Regardless, use of the term during the early s is at odds with the period tradition of naming a trail for its origin or destination. But surveyors and cartographers did not extend either name to interconnecting trails during the era. Although many popular maps show the Chisholm Trail stretching unbroken from some vague point in Texas to some point in Kansas, all were produced post and are subject to opinion and changing perceptions. On no known period map does a route in Texas bear the legend Chisholm Trail or Abilene Cattle Trail, nor do any depict the Chisholm extending north of the Cimarron River.
The only known period map on which a cattle trail crosses the Red at Montague County is Map of Texas Showing Routes of Transportation of Cattle, , published by the Interior Department for possible inclusion in an census report.
It labels that section as the Eastern, or Fort Worth, Trail. Wheeler and his partners, who in bought 2, steers in San Antonio. They planned to winter them on the plains, then trail them on to California. The tracks were made by Scot-Cherokee Jesse Chisholm , who in began hauling trade goods to Indian camps about miles south of his post near modern Wichita. Though it was originally applied only to the trail north of the Red River, Texas cowmen soon gave Chisholm's name to the entire trail from the Rio Grande to central Kansas.
Highway 81 follows the Chisholm Trail. It was, Wayne Gard observed, like a tree—the roots were the feeder trails from South Texas, the trunk was the main route from San Antonio across Indian Territory, and the branches were extensions to various railheads in Kansas. Between , when Abilene ceased to be a cattle market, and the trail might end at Ellsworth, Junction City, Newton, Wichita, or Caldwell. The cattle did not follow a clearly defined trail except at river crossings; when dozens of herds were moving north it was necessary to spread them out to find grass.
The animals were allowed to graze along for ten or twelve miles a day and never pushed except to reach water; cattle that ate and drank their fill were unlikely to stampede. When conditions were favorable longhorns actually gained weight on the trail. These herds were less than ten miles apart and were spaced so that each herd could spend the night at a watering point.
As a result of this spacing, if any problems occurred, the herds could stack up and time or cattle might be lost. At the Abilene railhead the trail boss would sell the cattle and horses, pay the cowboys, and return to Texas with the money for the owner, often repeating the trip year after year.
The drives headed for Abilene from to ; later Newton and Wichita, Kansas became the end of the trail. From to herds headed up the trail to Caldwell, Kansas, making it the last great cow town on the trail.
North of Silver City, the trail divided. The western route, primarily for freight and stages, curved slightly northwestward, ran through Concho, Fort Reno, and Kingfisher Stage Station, and then turned northeast.
The eastern branch, used primarily for cattle, left Silver City, curved slightly northeastward, passed west of present Mustang, crossed through Yukon, and passed to the west of Piedmont, crossing the Cimarron where Kingfisher Creek joins that river. The biggest cattle trailing years were and After the drives diminished considerably. The range was fenced in the Cherokee Strip after , an Kansas quarantine law against Texas fever prohibited the entry of Texas bovines, and in a blizzard destroyed most of the range cattle industry.
The Land Run of into the Unassigned Lands opened central Oklahoma to settlement, peopling the plains with farmers, who built fences and towns. The money from the sale of cattle was responsible for bringing Texas out of the economic depression caused by the war. Fort Worth is no stranger to the movie camera.
Cowtown has been seen in feature films, television shows, and By Sarah Covington. Ten must-know facts about the Chisholm Trail.
Chasing the Chisholm Trail Into the
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