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Following the Civil War, many Texas veterans returned to neglected farms and ranches to find large herds of unbranded cattle roaming the countryside. A pleasant surprise, but there was no market for beef in the South. In the North, however, the economy flourished. Texas ranchers tried shipping cattle but water transportation proved unprofitable.

As the nation's railroad network extended westward into Kansas, Texas ranchers began herding the longhorns overland. The Shawnee Trail was the first of several famous routes. Trail drives were cost effective; with a chuckwagon and cook, a dozen cowboys, a wrangler with horses (forty or so), and a trail boss, a herd of 2,000 or more cattle could be moved to market. Grass (after the extermination of the buffalo) was plentiful along the trail.

By 1874, the Chisholm Trail (successor to the Shawnee) no longer passed through open territory. There were fences and homesteads; the Indian nations charged fees for passage across their land; farmers and cattlemen were fearful of "Texas Fever" carried by the longhorns. To the west, there remained open range. A new trail was blazed to the railhead near Dodge City, Kansas, the "Western" or "Dodge City" Trail.

At its peak in 1881, approximately 300,000 cattle, 7,000 horses, and 1,000 men moved up the Western Trail. Altogether, more than 7,000,000 cattle traveled the Western Trail during its operation. The ford at the Red River was known as Doan's Crossing, after a store on the Texas side owned by C F Doan. The crossing was about three miles west of the confluence of the North Fork and the Red River, approximately twenty-two miles southeast of present-day Altus.

Modern popular culture has left us with a romantic notion of the cowboy. In fact, the typical cowboy was young, often not even twenty years old. He was poorly paid. Usually a cowboy owned little more than a change of clothes, a bedroll and a saddle. Many died of dust-induced pneumonia, lightning, and especially drowning at treacherous river crossings.

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Up the Trail in '76: The Journal of Lewis Warren Neatherlin, is an account of a cattle drive on the Western Trail in 1876. It is available through the museum gift shop. The original diary is part of the museum collection.

Last reviewed: 2004-Jan-21