Finding the Great Western Trail

By Sylvia Mahoney and Ray Klinginsmith

The Great Western Trail (GWT) is a nineteenth-century cattle trail that originated in Northern Mexico, ran west parallel to the Chisholm Trail, traversed the United States for some two thousand miles, and terminated after crossing the Canadian border. Yet through time, misinformation, and the perpetuation of error, the historic path of this once-crucial cattle trail has been lost. Finding the Great Western Trail documents the first multi-community effort made to recover evidence and verify the route of the Great Western Trail. The GWT had long been celebrated in two neighboring communities: Vernon, Texas, and Altus, Oklahoma. Separated by the Red River, a natural border that cattle trail drovers forded with their herds, both Vernon and Altus maintained a living trail history with exhibits at local museums, annual trail-related events, ongoing narratives from local descendants of drovers, and historical monuments and structures. So when Western Trail Historical Society members in Altus challenged the Vernon Rotary Club to mark the trail across Texas every six miles, the effort soon spread along the trail, in part through Rotary networks, from Mexico, across nine US states, and into Saskatchewan, Canada. This book is the story of finding and marking the trail, and it stands as a record of each community’s efforts to uncover their own local history. What began as bravado transformed into a grassroots project that, one hopes, will bring the previously obscured history of the Great Western Trail to light..

• Language: English
• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Release date: Apr 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9780896729445

Sylvia Mahoney

Sylvia Gann Mahoney was an educator for thirty-three years at community colleges in Texas and New Mexico as an administrator, teacher, and rodeo team coach. In 2015, she was named a fellow of the West Texas Historical Association. She became invested in the Great Western Trail project through her involvement in the Rotary Club of Vernon. She now lives in Fort Worth.

Book preview

Chapter 1: Longhorns, Drovers, Legends, Confusion

Volunteers searching for evidence to verify the route of the Great Western Trail faced several formidable challenges. Confusion about the very name of the Great Western Trail, about the major trails that famous trail bosses traveled, and confusion about events caused by memory and time complicated the research. The failure of historians and others to corroborate and closely examine evidence about the path has led to the perpetuation of errors. Adding to the confusion was a major discovery that one man had attempted to change the trail’s name. The attempt was so convincing that even in towns that have worked to correct it, some local citizens continue to publicize the erroneous history as truth. Volunteers working to validate the route of the trail had to carefully sift through the evidence to achieve their goal of documenting the trail accurately.

To place trail history into perspective, the following sections offer background information about the longhorns, the trail era, and the cowboy, all of which continued to influence residents along the trail as this project was undertaken. To help correct long-standing trail-name confusion, the narratives of on-site visits to a trail boss/cattleman’s ranch headquarters—John Chisum—whose name is often confused with Jesse Chisholm, and to the burial sites for men whose names are used for the names of trails, Oliver Loving, Charles Goodnight, and Jesse Chisholm, are included to create descriptive visualization of historically correct locations. The most persistent challenge was to overcome past attempts to manipulate trail history. Myths live on in the presence of truth. These problems permeated the research efforts, so they are also addressed in this first chapter.

The Reason for the Trail: The Longhorn

The longhorn, an American icon of the trail era, comparable to the cowboy/drover, contributed to the legend of the cowboy. The longhorn had the adaptability and physical durability sufficient to trod some two thousand miles, if necessary, across endless grassy plains. On occasion, the longhorns were pushed without water to limits that seemed impossible, but they endured. Because of their distinctive abilities and features, the presence of longhorns along the trail can be considered a visible resource for identifying links to South Texas, where they originated.

Herds were typically composed of 2,500 to 3,000 head of longhorns. The trail boss and eight to ten drovers moved the cattle twelve to fifteen miles a day. The cook drove the chuck wagon, and the wrangler took care of the remuda, the extra saddle horses. To stay well mounted for the arduous trip, each drover required at least four or five horses. If a horse became lame, got hurt or sick on the trail, the cowboy had to have a backup. He also changed horses to give them rest. The drovers had specific positions: two at the front, or point; two or more on each side, or flank; and two or more at the rear, or drag. The dusty rear position motivated the drovers to work hard to be promoted to flank or point positions.

The Longhorn

The longhorn’s history echoes the history of settlement and the blending of cultures in South Texas and northern Mexico. The huge number of longhorns populating South Texas following the Civil War evolved from cattle that had arrived with Spanish explorers. The first domesticated animals arrived in 1493 when Christopher Columbus brought Iberian long-horned cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep on his second trip to the West Indies, or Greater Antilles Islands (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and Española). In the 1520s, other Spanish colonists brought horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep to sustain their move north to establish new settlements on the Gulf Coast region of Mexico. Some settled at Veracruz, and others went as far north as Tampico, less than two hundred miles south of the future Texas border.

During the next three centuries, open-range cattle ranching spread northward through the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and into Texas. In these areas, cattle-raising traditions blended with those from the East Coast, Louisiana French, and Tejanos (Texans of Mexican descent).¹ Drovers from a diversity of ethnic backgrounds adapted Mexican equestrian skills for long trail drives across the Great Plains. The history of cattle brought to the Americas is a small entry in history books. Research, however, shows that origins of western ranching were more complex and ethnically diverse than has been supposed.²

In the New World, the long-horned cattle flourished by adapting through survival of the fittest. The original Spanish cattle were solid colors ranging from tan to cherry red with a few being black or brindle (grayish with darker flecks). By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spanish explorers, settlers, and mission priests started moving them north into the area that would become Texas. The cattle were used for breeding stock as well as for food, hides, and tallow.

By the nineteenth century, the Spanish horned cattle had interbred with feral English cattle, producing an ideal animal that gained weight while on the trail, withstood extreme heat or cold, and adapted to the terrain. They were able to subsist on very little feed and could travel long distances without water. The cows were fertile, reproduced easily and often, and protected their young. After centuries of adapting to life and circumstances in northern Mexico and South Texas, this American icon became famous during the Texas cattle trail days.³ In the late nineteenth century, groups of mostly young Texans and Mexicans mounted horses, gathered longhorns, and formed herds from the millions of free-roaming South Texas longhorns. They trailed the cattle north across the Great Plains, but this time they were used for turning a profit, not merely for consumption.

As the trail days ended and the twentieth century started, the longhorns had almost disappeared. Millions of longhorns had been sold for meat, used for tallow, or were even destroyed. Cattle owners started cross-breeding the lanky longhorn with other breeds to accommodate the demand for a higher fat content needed for tallow and desired in beef. Tick fever also contributed to the declension of the longhorn. The longhorn’s lean meat had not yet been recognized as heart-healthy beef.

An effort to save the longhorns from extinction began in 1927. With the help of a transplanted Texas cowboy, US Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming, a federal herd of purebred Texas Longhorns was established at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Cache, Oklahoma.⁴ Will C. Barnes and other US Forest Service rangers found twenty cows, three bulls, and

four calves that were, in their opinion, purebred Texas Longhorns.⁵ Another seed herd was established by native South Texas historian J. Frank Dobie, author of The Longhorns, who joined former range inspector Graves Peeler and oilman Sid W. Richardson in assembling a herd. That herd’s descendants, now cared for under the auspices of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, can be seen today at Fort Griffin State Historical Park.

By the 1930s, the future of the Longhorn breed was secured. Seven groups of longhorns of different origins and genetic bases were assembled by six families and one organization: Marks, Phillips, Butler, Wright, Yates, Peeler, and the Wichita Refuge. To verify the breed’s bloodline, the Cattlemen’s Texas Longhorn Registry (CTLR) inspected the cattle (and later used blood type and DNA analyses) to prove or disprove their sightings.⁶ In 1964, the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America (TLBAA), headquartered at the Fort Worth Stockyards, established the seven groups as authentic pure Longhorns.⁷

Two other Longhorn associations solidified the future of the breed. In 1990, the International Texas Longhorn Association (ITLA) created the first library of Texas Longhorn Research and Information Bulletins.⁸ In 2007 the new Texas Longhorn Marketing Alliance (TLMA) started the Longhorn World Championship competition with prestigious awards for length and circumference of horns.⁹ Today at the entrance to the Fort Worth Stockyards, Texas Gold, a larger-than-life bronze of seven longhorns cast by sculptor T. D. Kelsey of Rama, Colorado, represents the seven official Longhorn herds.¹⁰

The Trail Era

Initially, Easterners’ taste for beef following the Civil War contributed to the partnership between the longhorns and the cowboys/drovers. After the war, Texas veterans returned home to face another crisis: unemployment without benefits. Soon, entrepreneurs with considerable initiative and a willingness to take risks provided solutions for both unemployed Americans and a surplus of millions of longhorns in South Texas. One of these entrepreneurs, Joseph G. McCoy of Illinois, first recognized economic potential within the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864. The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads drove the golden spike on May 10, 1869, that completed the transcontinental railroad, thus reducing travel time and cost from the West to the East Coasts.

Taking advantage of this new rapid transportation to supply beef to Easterners, McCoy negotiated with Kansas Pacific (Union Pacific, Eastern Division) railroad to establish a railhead at Abilene, Kansas. He sent flyers to South Texas inviting unemployed Civil War veterans and others willing to take a risk to gather herds of 2,500 to 3,000 longhorns and trail them to Abilene, Kansas, on the east side of that state. Other railroad lines took advantage of the lucrative cattle market and other markets in Kansas and other Great Plains states. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company (shortened to Santa Fe Railroad) followed the ruts of the Santa Fe Trail, which included a line to Dodge City, Kansas, a major Great Western Trail railhead. The Union Pacific built lines into Nebraska and Colorado. Ogallala, Nebraska, and the northeastern corner of Colorado at Julesburg also became railhead destinations for GWT herds.

Dovetailing with the growth of railroads and advent of Texas cattle drives were acts of infamy that became notorious parts of America’s history: the destruction of the buffalo and the forced relocation of the Plains Indians onto reservations. The results of those two infamous acts left vast expanses of unoccupied grasslands that became available for open-range ranching while leaving a nefarious stain on the history of the American West. To help the railroads raise money for construction, the federal government gave grants of land to railroads, which encouraged sales of land to settlers. With these changes on the Great Plains, the economy boomed and the settlement of the American West surged with a large movement of people seeking land and a new life.

During this post–Civil War time, entrepreneurs vied to purchase

Texas longhorns and horses to stock new open-range ranching enterprises in the northern Great Plains states. As the flow of cattle and horses moved from south to north, the booming cattle industry provided an abundance of new jobs for many different skill levels. With the addition of open-range ranching enterprises to the burgeoning Eastern markets for Texas beef, the depressed economy recovered in Texas and across the Great Plains states.

The Cowboy/Drover Legend

As the drovers journeyed across the Great Plains seeking easy passage for their large herds of cattle, their images acquired the aura of legend. Traveling across the vast plains area, the cowboys/drovers were isolated from supplies, law enforcement, medical help, religious support, families, and other things conducive to their well-being.

The relative isolation of the cowboys/drovers inspired writers who generated volumes about the new business lifestyle and its inherent risks. Even more, it resulted in the creation of the legend of the cowboy through popular accounts and novels based on the glimpses others had of the cowboy/drover lifestyle. The cowboys/drovers, matured by war, were partially unrestricted by political, religious, and social rules for two to three months or more at a time. From this singular experience, they learned to be self-reliant, innovative, trustworthy, and adaptable to changing, often deadly situations. Business opportunities abounded. Some became trail bosses and even ranchers. Drovers learned the necessity of being loyal to the trail boss, which seems a contradiction to being independent; however, responsibility melded loyalty and independence together. Drovers also learned the merits of having a strong work ethic and the importance of practicing integrity among their drover companions and others along the trail. More than cattle went up the trail. Along the way, the drovers also mixed their cultures from south to north and north to south. The cowboy became the symbol of a lifestyle that had a usable range of values. Those values inspired and continued to foster a cultural commonality among residents in towns along the trail.

During this brief period, the common man in America’s Southwest experienced fewer restrictions than those levied onto the common man living elsewhere. As the newly employed trail hands stepped up into the saddle, a position once reserved for kings and military, their perspective from the back of a horse evolved while traveling up the trail. The optimism of economic recovery joined with captivating tales of young employees experiencing life on the trail. The drovers’ newly found freedom from restrictions became the basis of the image of the iconic cowboy. Fiction writers, especially the early Western dime novels written for eastern readers during the 1870s and 1880s, capitalized on the new lifestyle of freedom from political, religious, and social traditions depicted by major characters displaying legendary attributes. Thus, the legend grew to symbolize a way of life directed by values that defined Americans in a new way. Wild West shows, novels, songs, and art depicted the cowboys’ trail experiences in ways that captured the imagination of the international community. On the trail, the old hierarchies separating men fell away in the face of work responsibilities, loneliness, danger, or possibly death. Through the years, cattle- and horse-related enterprises and commemorative trail-related events have contributed to the trail residents’ collective memories that continue to reinforce the values attributed to the cowboy legend.

Memories of the Trail Era Contributed to the Grassroots Research Project

As the citizens in trail communities extended their hospitality to the trail research teams, it was evident that the cowboy lifestyle and values were an ongoing part of their lives. The ranch families continued to conform to the ranch-founder patriarch’s original work ethic, practices, and traditions in their day-to-day ranch operations. Volunteers, invited to watch the cowboys work, witnessed cowboys gathering, sorting, working, and branding cattle and horses, following practices similar to those used during the trail days. Most founders established their ranches as the result of trail-driving profits. In many communities, individual ranches have continued as family businesses from the trail days to the owners being participants in this twenty-first-century research project. The current ranch owners with their almost continuous replication of the past in their daily working-ranch practices provided substantial Great Western Trail primary-source materials.

Along the route, trail traditions rewarded loyalty to the status quo. Particularly in smaller towns, annual events such as cattle and horse shows and rodeos (especially ranch rodeos) held fast to traditions used in the trail days. Ranch teams competed in various contests for bragging rights among the ranches. Crowds of neighbors and friends of the cowboys and cowgirls filled the stands. Along with rodeo events, other contests contributed points to the ranch-team competition. Equally competitive were the chuck-wagon cook-offs, photography and art contests (often specific to a ranch), and music talent contests. Western symposiums and conferences, cowboy poetry events, and Western dances claimed attendance for two primary reasons: to visit with friends and to reinforce this way of life. These types of interactions helped set the stage for the GWT research project.

Confusion Regarding the Name of the Great Western Trail

The path followed by the Chisholm Trail, first used in 1867, ran into obstacles caused by the flow of homesteaders into Kansas, longhorns carrying tick fever, Kansas legislation to limit the passageway for cattle, and the increasing use of barbed wire. The result was that the trail’s shortest route to railheads on the eastern side of Kansas were closed to cattle moving in from Texas by 1884. The Great Western Trail’s path remained usable for some nineteen years, 1874 through 1893. Grassy open-range land, strategically located rivers, and the lack of settlers made the GWT the most accommodating path going north across the Great Plains, which is also called the High Plains in some northern states. Political and cultural influences, however, affected the path of the trail in some areas, such as the violence in the South Texas Nueces Strip, a subject for Chapter 3.

When research on this project was under way, some citizens along the trail disclosed that their towns had retained only minimal connections to their trail history. Although the main streets had been beaten out by the hoofs of thousands of cattle going north, their trail history had faded. Some towns had focused on other historical events or famous people from their towns. However, research volunteers in these towns joined the grassroots effort because they recognized the benefits of a project that focused on their town and county.

Research started with the names used for the Great Western Trail in their towns. Drovers tended to use the name of the next supply point for the name of that segment of the trail. Some names for segments were Matamoros Trail, Western Trail (used when leaving San Antonio), Fort Griffin Trail, Doan’s Crossing, Fort Supply, Dodge City Trail, Ogallala Trail, and Texas Trail. The last segment name was the most common name used for the trail into Canada. Slowly, and with mixed results, these piecemeal names gave way to the use of a name for the complete trail—the Great Western Trail. Another possible reason for the GWT’s obscurity was the use of a direction in its name. Trails named for famous cattlemen or trail bosses, such as Goodnight and Loving, gained easy recognition. Initially, the Chisholm Trail was called the Eastern Trail until it left Texas at Red River Station near Nocona. In Oklahoma, known then as Indian Territory, the Eastern Trail followed freighter Jesse Chisholm’s wagon ruts to Kansas. As time passed, the Eastern Trail acquired the more usable name, Chisholm Trail—a name attached to a persona rather than a direction. The only segment called the Western Trail during trail days was the path that went west, not east, from San Antonio. When it turned north, it became known as the Fort Griffin Trail. A few early novels used the Western Trail’s generic name in relation to the Eastern Trail. Although fiction promoted the name Western Trail, that name for the complete length of the trail had not been verified in an academic study.

In 1965, the first definitive academic study for the Great Western Trail was Texas Tech University historian Jimmy M. Skaggs’s thesis, The Great Western Cattle Trail to Dodge City, Kansas. In the preface, Skaggs wrote, "The Great Western Cattle Trail, the last of the major Longhorn cattle trails, has been conspicuously overlooked as a research topic. The reasons for its beginning, its route and problems, the experiences of the drovers, the story of the towns that grew up alongside it, and the reasons for its decline have been dealt with separately in letters, memoirs, and literature, but no synthesis of all of these various aspects has ever before been combined into a single story. It is the purpose of this thesis to provide such a synthesis from the materials accessible at Texas Technological College."¹¹ Since Skaggs’s academic study used Great Western Trail, that name was apparently in common usage or was the most logical name to use for a trail with many