Cattle Trails

There were several cattle trails heading out of Texas in the early 1800s because they were transporting the cattle to their new location before the cow was slaughtered or used by a rancher. One of the reasons cattle routes are important to Texas history is because it was the only way to transport cattle to rail lines in the north. On top of that, there are still many places around Texas that preserve this part of Texas history, such as the Stockyards in Fort Worth, TX (insert picture here). The four main cattle trails rolling out of Texas in the 1800s are the Shawnee Trail, Chisolm Trail, the Western Trail, and the Goodnight-Loving Trail. You might notice that some of these trails, such as the Chisolm Trail are, still existing today except in a different compacity, such as the Chisolm Trail toll road up in the Dallas Fort Worth area. For this post, I will look at these four major cattle trails as well as the XIT Ranch cattle trails.

The four major cattle trails mentioned above arose in the 1800s because, as it is today, cattle ranching is a business. In the early 1800s, the rail lines out west (including Texas) mainly ran west to east, so they had to have cowboys, who were typically young men, transverse the elements with hundreds of cattle to reach the rail lines where they would be sold out east. The other trail examined here is the XIT Ranch trail. The XIT Ranch was founded in 1885 by the Farwell brothers when they acquired 3 million acres of land, spanning from the Texas Panhandle into eastern Montana, in return for building the capitol building in Texas (XITranch.com). This, in turn, helped not only drive parts of the Texas cattle industry but also to establish and grow the cattle industry in Montana.  

If you look at the map above, this photo was generated in ArcGIS by overlaying two historical maps (XIT cattle trails and Texas cattle trails) onto a base map. Once the maps were georeferenced and overlayed in transparency, lines were drawn emphasizing the direction of the trails vs the direction of the early railroad system in the Great Plains. From this, you will see that the cattle trails in the golden brown mainly run north to south as the cattlemen are moving the cattle to and away from the railroads (in red). This was very common until the late 1800s and into the early 1900s when railroads began running from north to south in this part of the United States.

NOTE: In the comment section below, tell us any interesting facts about the cattle trails or Texas’ cattle history merging with Montana’s.  

 References: 

Continuing the Legacy. XIT Ranch – Honoring the Heritage of the XIT Ranch

Feicgt, J., (NA) Cattle Trails and the Wild West. Cattle Trails - Jonathan Feicht's Website 

Mendel, S.A., (2014). Texas History- What were the Four Major Cattle Trails in 1800s Texas? The Mendel Law Firm, L.P. www. mendellawfirm.com/texas-history

Miller, M.M., (2015). Cowboys and Capitalists: The XIT Ranch in Texas and Montana, 1885-1912. Montana The Magazine of Western History. 65(4). www.jstor.org/stable/26322830