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THE OLD CHISHOLM TRAIL
Turn-of-the-century cowboy ballads often sing about "The Old
Chisholm Trail." According to those nostalgic little ditties, the
trail was both dangerous and dull, exciting and exhausting, challenging
and boring, a back-breaker and a heartbreaker.
Today, we discovered that U. S. Route 81, which we traveled north
yesterday from northern Texas into southern Oklahoma, travels the route of
the Old Chisholm Trail! This morning we tried to visit the local Chisholm
Trail Museum which is operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Unfortunately, it was closed and in a state of disrepair. The Oklahoma
Historical Society’s Web Site has an interesting write-up, however.
The trail was developed in1861 by Black Beaver, a Delaware Indian
scout. It is named after Jesse Chisholm, a mixed blood Cherokee trader who
used it as a trade route. Most of the fame of the Trail, however, came as
a result of cattle drives along that route.
In 1867, an Illinois cattle dealer named Joseph McCoy realized how the
railroad could expand the market possibilities for Texas cattle. He
established a cattle trading center at Abilene, Kansas on the
Kansas-Pacific Railroad.
From that year until the late 1870s, huge herds of cattle from south
and central Texas were herded up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene. There they
were loaded into train cars and transported to the large cities of the
North and East. Cattle could be sold in New York or Baltimore for example,
for ten times more than on the ranges of the South. By the 1889 when the
trail was abandoned for routes further west, an estimated 3 million cattle
had been driven from Texas to the cowtowns of Kansas along the Chisholm
Trail.
What a pity that the museum was closed! It might have reminded me again
of the words of those old cowboy ballads that begin, "Boys, let me
tell ya ‘bout the Old Chisholm Trail..."
9 May 2009 - mshr
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