…and on the eighth day God created the horse in perfect image, to romp, graze, gallop, play, and make manure wherever it darn well pleases, in divine grace.
The Great Western Trail in south Texas came about in the 19th century as a means to move horses and cattle to markets and stock yards up north and in to eastern states. Also known as the Texas Trail, Fort Griffin Trail, Western Trail, Dodge City Trail and northern Trail, it had its heyday in the 1870’s and 1880’s, with a total duration from 1874 to 1893. (1)
Rail road yards in Nebraska and Kansas transported horses and long cattle to the wide open ranges of Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Montana, and also to two Canadian provinces.
Because rail prices were so expensive to ship cattle, cattle drives came into being, with real cowboys, chuck wagons and horses, driving cattle north, up out of Texas.
Established in 1874 by Captain John T. Lytle as “The Best Great Western Cattle Trail,” Captain Lytle liked the route when he made a cattle drive with 3,500 head from South Texas to Nebraska.
Over the next five years, it became one of the most famous cattle trails in America’s history of the wild west. (2)
As the year 1893 approached, usage of the trail began to decline and around 1885 cattle drives had become less common. Legislation demanding a quarantine on all Texas cattle due to a disease called “Texas Fever,” which was spread by a parasitic tick, forced a halt to the movement of Texas cattle, as had barbed wire, which delineated fencing and property areas.
Deadwood, South Dakota, saw the arrival of the last major cattle drive out of Texas in 1893.
It is estimated that some 6 to 7 million steers and 1 million horses traveled The Great Western Trail. (3)
Coming up out of Texas, cattle and steers arrived in Cedar Creek, Montana, where they would free-range-graze for a 2-year span before being rounded up and shipped off to the stock yards in Chicago, Illinois.
In the 1930’s, two Trail markers were set up in a remote corner of the southeast part of the Texas Panhandle. This was to commemorate Doan’s Red River Crossing . (4)
Doan’s was a trading post and the last stepping-off place of civilization on the Trail, before entering Indian Territory.
Dry goods, provisions, Stetson hats, supplies, guns and ammunition, and tools and tobacco could all be bought at Doan’s Red River Crossing before a cattle drive headed out and hit the trail. Mr. Corwin F. Doan (1848-1929) was the Post Master there at the time, and he also ran a supply post. (5)
Mr. C.E. Doan recorded all activity at Doan’s Crossing in carefully logged record books, including all the names of the Trail Bosses, cattle company names, and numbers of heads of cattle in the herds that came through each year.
Historians and culture buffs have decided to start an acknowledgement of The Great Western Trail. They thought that placing cement markers every 6 to 10 miles along the entire length of the Trail would be fun and would help people keep the history and the memory of the Trail alive. Markers are being placed from the Rio Grande River on up to Ogalla, Nebraska. Tourists and historians are following the Trail, seeing the sights, going into new towns, and making new friends along the way. (6)
The first marker in Texas was positioned in May of 2005, at the now-ghost town of Doans, north of Vernon, Texas.
An annual picnic event is held there every year since 1884, with a BBQ, T-shirt and memorabilia sale, and the crowning of a King and Queen, for the BBQ. (7)
Other markers placed in Texas included Seymour, Texas, another major point on the Trail. Seymour was a supply town and a popular stopping-off place for cowboys. Cowboys and Indians both did business in Seymour, socializing and carrying-on peacefully there.
Cowboys back in the day had to find their way along the Trail by using landmarks.
A notable white mountain known as Mt. Tepee, aka Mt. Webster, looked like a large white tepee, in among the darker peaks of the Wichita Mountains. Others were the Big Elk Crossing and Soldier’s Spring. (8)
Soldier’s Spring is obscured now and difficult to find. It is a huge, red, sandstone bluff with a water spring gushing out of the top, and forming a pool at the bottom.
The names and ranks of soldiers who passed by are rumored to have been carved into the sandstone there.
Not much is left of any of it today, just a few broken pieces of rock and a small puddle, fed by the everlasting spring.
During the time of The Great Western Trail, there was forced relocation of the Native Peoples, the Indians, by white people.
At first, the Indians were friendly, but as thousands more white settlers, cowboys, horses, and steers began traveling and settling and grazing upon their excellent-quality land, the Indians demanded payments.
The Indians wanted 7 or 8 steers per cattle drive, but the Trail Bosses would only give them 3 or 4 lame or sick steers that would have died anyway or not brought a good price at the yard.
If the Indians didn’t receive their beef payment of steers, they would spook the cattle at night, causing the herd to stampede. (9)
Eventually, soldiers were assigned to escort the cattle drives. The cattle drives at the Washita River Crossing, by Edwardsville Rock, were escorted by soldiers who came up from Doan’s Red River Crossing.
It is believed that the Washita River Regiments were the soldiers who carved their names into the rocks at Soldier Springs.
More next week on this interesting historical item, the places, and the people who traveled it.
How appropriate my closing with the immortal words of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, “Happy Trails to You.”
1,3,7: RI, The Rotarian Magazine, December 2017, Vol. 196, No. 6
2, 4,5,6,8,9: Internet, Wikipedia