Cattle trails out of Texas
“Here was all these cheap long-horned steers over-running Texas; here was the rest of the country crying out for beef -- and no railroads in Texas to get them out. So they trailed them out, across hundreds of miles of wild country."
--Teddy Blue Abbott, author of We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher
“All the cattle in the world seemed to be coming up out of Texas. On the trail you were rarely out of sight of a herd – you could see the dust for twenty miles. It was such a pretty sight to see them, all strung out, the sun flashing on their horns. The average crew was eleven men. The two men in the lead were the point men, then two behind them on swing, two on the flank, and two on drag in the rear; with the cook and the horse wrangler and the boss, that made eleven. The poorest men always worked on drag. I’ve seen them come off a herd with the dust half and inch deep on their hats and thick as fur in their eyebrows and moustaches, and if they shook their head dust would fall off them in showers.”
--Teddy Blue Abbott
"Longhorn cattle of Texas drove the dollars into town. For ten more years, over five million head were driven up the western branch of the Chisholm and Western Trails to Dodge City. Fort Dodge was closed in 1882 and by 1886, the cattle drives had ended."
-- Nancy Trauer, Dodge City Convention & Visitors Bureau
--Teddy Blue Abbott, author of We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher
“All the cattle in the world seemed to be coming up out of Texas. On the trail you were rarely out of sight of a herd – you could see the dust for twenty miles. It was such a pretty sight to see them, all strung out, the sun flashing on their horns. The average crew was eleven men. The two men in the lead were the point men, then two behind them on swing, two on the flank, and two on drag in the rear; with the cook and the horse wrangler and the boss, that made eleven. The poorest men always worked on drag. I’ve seen them come off a herd with the dust half and inch deep on their hats and thick as fur in their eyebrows and moustaches, and if they shook their head dust would fall off them in showers.”
--Teddy Blue Abbott
"Longhorn cattle of Texas drove the dollars into town. For ten more years, over five million head were driven up the western branch of the Chisholm and Western Trails to Dodge City. Fort Dodge was closed in 1882 and by 1886, the cattle drives had ended."
-- Nancy Trauer, Dodge City Convention & Visitors Bureau
