LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Chisholm Trail
built 633 days ago
In its time, the Chisholm Trail was considered to be one of the wonders of the western world. Cattle herds as large as ten thousand were driven from Texas over the trail to Kansas. The trail acquired its name from trader Jesse Chisholm, a part-Cherokee who, just before the Civil War, built a trading post in what is now western Oklahoma City. Black Beaver, a Delaware Indian scout and friend of Chisholm, had led Union soldiers north into Kansas along part of the route after the federal government abandoned Indian Territory to the Confederates at the beginning of the Civil War.
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Chisholm Trail is Lockhart's biggest annual festival! The second week of June, from Wednesday to Sunday held at the Lockhart City Park. This is a major tourism event for the Lockhart Chamber of Commerce and the City of Lockhart. The event is attended by 30,000+ people. Cities and counties from all over central Texas are represented in the parade with beautiful parade floats!
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The Chisholm Trail had several advantages. It was farther west which avoided farmers who tried to stop the passage of cattle on their lands. Streams on the trail were smaller and easier to cross. There were fewer skirmishes with American Indians. McCoy's brochures described the advantages. "It is more direct.
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The Chisholm Trail led to the new profession of trailing contractor. A few large ranchers such as Capt. Richard King and Abel (Shanghai) Pierceqqv delivered their own stock, but trailing contractors handled the vast majority of herds. Among them were John T. Lytleqv and his partners, who trailed about 600,000 head. Others were George W. Slaughterqv and sons, Snyder Brothers, Blocker Brothers, and Pryor Brothers. In 1884 Pryor Brothers contracted to deliver 45,000 head, sending them in fifteen separate herds for a net profit of $20,000.
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Once the greatest cow trail in the world, the Chisholm Trail served to get Texas cattle north to the Kansas railheads from which they were shipped to the other parts of the country. The main stem of the Chisholm Trail ran along what is now US 81. Cattle were first moved over the trail in 1867. In the ten years from 1867 to 1877, more than three million head of cattle passed through Oklahoma to Kansas.
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The Chisholm Trail was finally closed by barbed wireqv and an 1885 Kansas quarantine law; by 1884, its last year, it was open only as far as Caldwell, in southern Kansas. In its brief existence it had been followed by more than five million cattle and a million mustangs, the greatest migration of livestock in world history.
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Chisholm Trail