The Chisholm Trail: How Texas Longhorns Reached Kansas Railheads

What was the Chisholm Trail?

The Chisholm Trail was the main route for driving Texas cattle to the railroads of Kansas in the years after the Civil War. Drives began on ranches near San Antonio and gathered at places like Fort Worth and Red River Station. They crossed the Red River into Indian Territory, then ran nearly straight north through lands of the Chickasaw, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Cherokee until they reached Kansas rail towns such as Abilene, Ellsworth, Newton, Wichita, Caldwell and Hunnewell.

A drive typically carried 2,000 to 3,000 head with about ten cowboys, a chuck wagon cook and a horse wrangler. Herds left Texas in spring, covered 8 to 10 miles a day and took about two months. Cattle gained roughly 80 to 100 pounds a head on the way, according to the Kansas Historical Society.

Who was Jesse Chisholm?

Jesse Chisholm was a Scottish-Cherokee trader, guide and interpreter who spoke several Indian languages and built trading posts in what is now Oklahoma. The trail took his name because part of it followed his trade routes, but he was not a cattle drover. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum notes that he died of cholera in 1868 at Left Hand Spring, near present-day Geary, Oklahoma.

The name came later than the trail. A Red River historian reports that while it was in use the route was called the Abilene Cattle Trail, and that cowboys gave it the name Chisholm Trail when they recalled their work for the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. It is also often confused with the Chisum Trail, after John Chisum, who built a ranching empire along the Pecos River in New Mexico in 1873.

Why did Texas cattle go north?

During the Civil War, Union blockades cut off eastern beef supplies and Texas longhorns multiplied unattended on the plains. Afterward, cattle worth about $2 a head in Texas could sell for up to $40 in Chicago. Missouri banned Texas cattle because they carried a tick that spread Spanish fever to local herds, and Kansas did the same in 1861, but in 1867 it repealed parts of its law to allow driving into the western part of the state.

Joseph McCoy, an Illinois merchant, saw the opportunity. He persuaded the Kansas Pacific Railway to build a spur to Abilene, built a hotel, stockyard, office and bank there and advertised the town across Texas. The first drive reached Abilene in August 1867, and the first rail shipment left on 5 September 1867. A surveyor named Tim Hersey laid out a new trail for him.

How many cattle used the Chisholm Trail?

Sources differ. The Kansas Historical Society says more than 3,000,000 head were shipped east from McCoy's pens in Abilene between 1867 and 1871. The National Cowboy Museum says more than 1.5 million longhorns were driven up the trail to Abilene in those years. Part of the gap may be a difference between cattle driven and cattle shipped, so treat both as estimates. For the whole period the museum cites an estimate of 5 million or more Texas cattle driven north from 1866 to 1884, most of them on this trail.

Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita and beyond

Abilene was the main Kansas cowtown from 1867 to 1871, and 1871 was its last big year, with about 40,000 head shipped by rail. In 1872 Abilene told drovers their herds were no longer welcome. Ellsworth took over from 1871 to 1875, with over 150,000 cattle trailed there in 1873, and Wichita competed from about 1872 after a rail line reached it. Dodge City, served by the Western Cattle Trail, became the principal Kansas market from 1875 to 1885.

How the trail ended

In 1885 Kansas again made driving Texas cattle into the state illegal, this time because of Spanish fever and hoof-and-mouth disease. Barbed wire, which closed the open range, also contributed, and by then railroads had reached Texas, so beef could ship without long drives. A Red River historian says the drives trickled to a halt as the railroads moved west and the fences went up.

Costs and context

The trail ran across Indian Territory, the homeland of the Chickasaw, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Cherokee, and its herds carried a tick that spread disease to northern cattle, which is why states closed their borders to Texas stock. The boom towns at the northern end also became known for violence.

Learn more

Read the Kansas Historical Society entry on the Chisholm Trail, the National Cowboy Museum's seven facts and the Red River Historian account. For cowtown details, see the Kansas cowtowns overview. For more trail stories, see ranching history on farm.FM and a farm.FM story on the Chisholm Trail.