Customer Reviews

The Chisholm Trail

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This is the story of one of the largest mass animal migrations in history. From 1867 until 1890 roughly 10 million Longhorn cattle and one million horses would be moved from Southern and Central Texas to the Kansas rail head at Abilene, Kansas. It was hard, hazardous work that required hard men immune to the danger the work provided. Trail herding offered low pay, heat, thick dust, drought, poor food, stampedes, hail storms, treacherous river crossings, rustlers and occasional scrapes with Indians. Above all else it was a very long ride, over a thousand miles requiring four to six months of dedication. Some men only made the ride once. Some men knew only this work. But when it was over, when the trail had been fenced off, plowed under and passed into history, 35,000 men and some women would have made the trek, delivering beef, leather and tallow on the hoof to Northern markets.

Texas had beef. Millions and millions of Longhorn cattle, descendants of herds brought 400 years earlier by the initial Spanish settlers and explorers, roamed the vast plains and river bottoms. The Chisholm Trail was the thoroughfare through which these cattle were converted into dollars. The trail started at the Rio Grande, headed North through Gonzales, Lockhart and Austin, passed through Fort Worth and crossed the Red River into Indian Territory at, naturally enough, Red River Crossing. From there it continued north to Caldwell, Kansas, Wichita and finally, 1,000 miles later, the Abilene rail head for shipment to eastern markets. It was a huge vacuum sucking cows from as far east as Houston and as far west as Del Rio and all points in between. Later, as the railroads pushed west and settlers closed the range, other towns such as Ellsworth and Dodge City would replace Abilene as the terminus.

This book is not a romantic novel where Hollywood's leading man gets the girl at the end of the movie. This is a serious history that preserves the courage, daring and business enterprise of the cattle owners and their cowboys, establishing them as key participants in the Nation's settlement and westward expansion. It details the importance of the Chisholm Trail, the role it played in the development of the American West and the conduit it was for delivering animals to a hungry east and a developing upper Midwest. It established, among many other things, the meat packing business in the United States, ranching in the upper Great Plains and the rail and highway transportation corridors that still serve the nation today. It is a fascinating story well told about depressed times well handled by focused men, who coped magnificently with life as they found it.

Finishing this fine work I finally understood why the University of Texas chose the Longhorn as its mascot. Chisholm's Trail runs right through Austin, Texas. Interstate 35, the old trail itself, borders the campus. What a wonderful honor to the men and women who seriously changed life for the better, not just in Texas but throughout the United States.

There were no characters to hold ones interest. I got bored reading about yet another and another cattle drive with no person of interest to hold it together.