Cattle Trail Crossing

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Cattle Trail Crossing in Wise County. Now settle in, because this one goes back a long way. All the way to the years right after the Civil War, when Texas was broke, her economy wrecked, and the grasslands were full of cattle with nowhere to go.

Somewhere near this very spot ran one of the feeder branches of the Chisholm Trail: the most famous cattle trail that ever linked the vast grasslands of Texas with the meat-hungry markets of the north. Say that phrase out loud: meat-hungry markets of the north. That's not poetry.

That was just the plain situation. And Texas had the beef to answer it. The original trail itself, the spine of the whole operation, stretched from the North Canadian River to the Arkansas River, and it was blazed in 1865 by a man named Jesse Chisholm, a half-Scottish and half-Cherokee trader who apparently knew a thing or two about finding a path across the land.

That route ran two hundred and twenty miles. Not a short walk under any circumstances, and considerably less pleasant when you're pushing cattle. But the drovers took it up, and they didn't stop there.

They extended it north. They extended it south. Branches snaked up all the way from the Rio Grande, gradually threading their way toward the main trail, converging at the Red River.

You can almost picture it: a thousand tributaries of hooves and dust, all flowing toward the same channel. Now, the trail had its trouble spots. Texas weather being what Texas weather is (unpredictable, ornery, and largely indifferent to anyone's plans) and with hostile Indians sometimes blocking the main route, drovers couldn't always keep to the same path.

But certain points were fixed. Non-negotiable. One of those was the Trinity River ford at Fort Worth, just south of here.

If the river had flooded recently, a herd might wait there for weeks. Weeks. Just the cattle, the drovers, the mud, and whatever patience a man could scrape together.

That crossing wasn't optional; it was the price of the trail. And the trail, for all its hardship, was doing something enormous. It was putting Texas back together.

By 1895, the picture had changed. The fenced range had come in. The railroad had come in.

Quarantines against the fever tick had come in. And the flood of cattle that had once poured out of Texas on the hoof had been reduced to a trickle. The trail era was over.

But here's what it left behind: an economy restored after the devastation of the Civil War, and a legacy woven into folksong and legend. The cowboy days on an untamed Texas frontier that this little stretch of ground, right here, was a quiet part of. Not every piece of history announces itself.

Some of it just runs through the grass and keeps on going.

What the marker says

Near this site ran one of the many "feeder" branches of the famous Chisholm Trail, best-known of all the cattle trails that once linked the vast grasslands of Texas with the meat-hungry markets of the north. The original trail, which stretched from the North Canadian to the Arkansas River, was blazed in 1865 by Jesse Chisholm, a half-Scottish and half-Cherokee trader. The 220-mile route, soon taken up by drovers, was extended north and south. Branches all the way from the Rio Grande gradually snaked up to join the main trail at the Red River. Although unpredictable Texas weather and hostile Indians sometimes prevented the drovers from keeping to the main route, certain points were fixed. One of these was the Trinity River ford at Fort Worth, just south of here, where cattle might have to wait for weeks to cross if the river had recently flooded. In 1895, the fenced range, railroad, and quarantines against the fever tick had reduced to a trickle the flood of cattle leaving Texas on the hoof; but by this time, the trail had helped restore the economy of Texas (wrecked by the Civil War) and it had left a legacy in folksong and legend of cowboy days on the untamed Texas frontier.