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Great Lakes Texas Longhorn Association (GLTLA) Meeting
Hello!!
Just want to remind our members we have a meeting coming up quickly! It will be on May 7, 2016 at the home of Tom Smith. We will have a potluck lunch, so please remember to bring a dish to pass.
We will also enjoy a ranch tour and have our member meeting. The GLTLA will also have new t-shirts available for purchase at this meeting! Please feel free to contact Hicks Texas Longhorns at 269-721-3473 or Jami Baker at 616-218-2225. Below is a price sheet and the image of the t-shirt. Thanks so much and we look forward to seeing everyone!
Missy Hicks
Treasurer, GLTLA
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by Kenneth Moore, San Antonio History Examiner  The story of Bose Ikard begins in Summerville, Noxubee County, Mississippi. He was born a slave in the year 1847. His mother was a slave named "King" and his father her owner, Dr. Milton Ikard. In 1852, Bose Ikard along with his mother and another mulatto woman, traveled with Dr. Ikard and family (a wife and legitimate son, William S. Ikard) to Parker County in Texas. It was there that Dr. Ikard took up cattle raising near what is now Weatherford, Texas. This was no easy feat in those days, as the Comanche and Kiowa were always raiding. It was from nearby that Cynthia Ann Parker was taken into captivity by the Comanche on just such a raid. Young Bose took quickly to the West and being a cowboy. He was befriended by one of Dr. Ikards' neighboring cattlemen, Charles Goodnight. One of the female slaves, believed to be Bose's mother actually financed Dr. Ikards start in the cattle business, being exchanged for a thousand dollars worth of cattle from another stockman neighbor, Oliver Loving.
During the Civil War W.S. Ikard, the doctors legitimate son joined the Mason's Company, Texas Calvary, Texas State Troops, Confederate States of America and was more busy fighting Indians and Northern renegades in North Texas, than Union soldiers in the field. During the war the Ikard slaves were freed but chose to stay on with the Ikards well after the war. As a gift Dr. Ikard gave them all his last name.
During that time Bose Ikard developed his skills as cowboy, tracker and even cook. In one such event, he and a group of ranch hands herding Ikards' cattle came upon an Indian trail which they followed for more than fifteen miles with Bose after them like a bloodhound. When they finally caught up with the Comanches, Bose who immediately recognized one of his horses as being among the ponies the Indians were herding, exclaimed. "Oh yes, damn you, you've got MY HORSE!" As the story was told by W.S. Ikard, all the stolen horses were recovered and a number of the Indians killed with the remainder barely escaping with their lives.
 It was Bose Ikard who joined Goodnight and Loving on their first cattle drive establishing the Goodnight-Loving trail through Horsehead Crossing and into New Mexico. For those reader who have not put this story together yet, it was Bose Ikard who Larry McMurtry fashioned his character Joshua "Deets" after in his beloved western novel "Lonesome Dove". When Goodnight returned to Weatherford to get another herd together, it was Bose he took with him to make the 700 miles trip. And when Goodnight fulfilled his promise to his dear friend Oliver Loving to be buried in Weatherford, Texas, again it was with Bose Ikard at his side.
 Goodnight and Ikard forged a bond on the trail that could never be broken. Goodnight encouraged Ikard to not return to Colorado with him, where colored men were few and far between. So Ikard remained in Weatherford marrying his wife Angeline and together they had six children of whom five survived. Bose continued to farm and was known around town as a handyman. Upon his death in 1929 of influenza, his dear friend Charles Goodnight had a granite marked inscribed to be put on Ikard grave. It still stands there today.
On it reads: "Served with me for four years on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, never shirked duty or disobeyed an order, rode with me in many stampedes, participated in three engagements with Comanches, splendid behavior." -C. Goodnight
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Caprock Chronicles: Great Western Trail - Almost forgotten last major Texas cattle trail
By SYLVIA GANN MAHONEY FOR A-J MEDIA
(Lubbock Avalache Journal EDITOR'S NOTE): "Caprock Chronicles" is a weekly series of short articles and essays that examine the life, people, events, and historical places of our region's past. Paul Carlson, professor emeritus of history at Texas Tech, writes or edits each contribution in the series. Today's essay is written by Sylvia Gann Mahoney, former college professor and author of "Finding the Great Western Trail." The essay reviews the long trail's history and its place in the colorful cattle-trailing industry.
 The Great Western Trail, the last and longest of the major routes for driving Texas cattle to northern markets, has existed in the shadow of the famous Chisholm Trail, which ran approximately 100 miles farther east. The trail had many names as it moved north 2,000 miles.
Unobstructed grasslands provided passage for the Great Western for some 19 years, 1874-93, that cattle trailers used it.
Those same grasslands, however, relegated the trail to obscurity, for the grass-dominated route lacked towns and cities with newspapers that might advertise and promote the route.
After the Civil War, young veterans returned to South Texas to find few jobs but millions of free-ranging longhorn cattle.
At the same time, an Illinois entrepreneur, Joseph McCoy, assessed the growing eastern market for beef and the availability of longhorns and labor in South Texas. With railroads extending west, McCoy negotiated a railhead in Kansas. He sent circulars to South Texas promoting the merits of trailing cattle herds of 2,500 to 3,000 head to Kansas.
Cattlemen and cowboys responded. In 1867 and afterward, such cattle-trailers, or drovers, moved herds north along the Chisholm Trail, also called the Eastern Trail, to McCoy's shipping site in Abilene, Kansas.
The federal Homestead Act of 1862, however, invited easterners to go west to claim 160 acres and begin farming. They did, especially in Kansas, and near the Chisholm Trail.
Soon, trail-driven cattle trampled homesteaders' farms, and domestic cattle died. The South Texas longhorns infected Kansas cattle with tick fever, something to which the longhorns were immune.
Kansas legislators, recognizing the economic boon that homesteaders created in their state, started closing parts of the eastern Kansas to trail herds.
So John T. Lytle, a South Texas cattleman and entrepreneur, beginning in 1874, turned his herds to the west. In Texas, he moved his route nearer to San Antonio, and from there trailed them north through what is now Kerrville, Brady, Albany, and Fort Griffin.
Lytle crossed the Red River into Oklahoma at Doan's, a low-water crossing, pointed his animals north from there, and delivered his first herd to Fort Robinson, Nebraska. The Great Western Trail had begun.
Drovers used many names for the trail. They called each segment of it by the name of the next supply point. Thus, there were such names as the Fort Griffin-Doan's Crossing trail. Farther north, it became the Dodge City Trail, the Ogallala Trail, and, in Canada, the Texas Trail.
Drovers soon found that the unimpeded grasslands with rivers strategically located for watering herds extended northward across the Great Plains to Saskatchewan and Alberta in Canada. By 1879, after which Native Americans had been relegated to reservations and bison herds had been decimated, there was little to block drovers from moving cattle.
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Provided by Sylvia Gann Mahoney-In 2004, Jeff Bearden and Rick Jouett deliver a Great Western Trail post down Wyatt Earp Boulevard to Front Street in Dodge City, Kansas, where it stands by a larger-than-life longhorn steer statue.
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The northern and eastern markets for South Texas cattle led to a thriving range-cattle industry stretching from the Mexican border into Canada.
Cattle trailed from Texas traded at railroad shipping points in Kansas and Nebraska, were sold to federal agents on Indian reservations, or, when marketed to ranchers, became the first herds on big-time ranges in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and Canada.
The cattle industry boomed in the 1880s. But cattle-trailing slowed as railroads pushed on to the Great Plains and spread their lines into the Southwest. In the 1890s, long-distance cattle trailing ended.
While subsequent histories, folklore, films and fiction kept the Chisholm Trail alive, at least in the public memory, the Great Western Trail was forgotten.
Then, in the 1930s, an Oklahoma man, P. P. Ackley, attempted to change the name of the Great Western Trail to Longhorn
Chisholm Trail. He convinced the Texas Highway Department to place signs that marked the Chisholm. But, he also placed the same signs on the Great Western Trail, promoting historical confusion and inaccuracies.
In 2003, Chisholm Trail historian Bob Klemme challenged two Oklahomans to mark the Great Western Trail across their state. They in turn challenged Texans to do the same. The idea grew.
By 2011, volunteers, many of whom were Rotarians, from Mexico, Canada and nine U.S. states (except Wyoming) had documented and marked the trail. As a result, the Great Western Trail has once again secured its place in history.
READ THE ARTICLE HERE
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Great Western Cattle Trail brought Texas Longhorns to the High Plains
By news@agweek.com
 SPEARFISH, S.D. -- Spring and summer are perfect seasons to learn more about the region's agricultural heritage. One of the best places to learn the "western" traditions is at the High Plains Western Heritage Center in Spearfish, S.D.
Peggy Ables, executive director of the center, and her staff have helped thousands of tourists and regional residents celebrate the cattle heritage of five states -- South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and Wyoming.
The center, located on a hilltop with a panoramic view, has many exhibits and projects, but is in the midst of a huge endeavor to promote the Great Western Cattle Trail. It's a historical interpretation effort that highlights the Longhorn cattle in the High Plains region through the early 1900s.
The cattle drives were started by Texans who had fought in the Civil War and had neglected their herds back home. During their time away, herds had multiplied to the point where there were too many animals and not enough grass.
"They decided to head them north to get them into better pasture," Ables says.
Several trails developed, including one that entered Oklahoma near Altus and exited near Buffalo, and then headed north to Dodge City, Kan. The Great Western Cattle Trail (sometimes called the Western Trail or the Texas Trail) became the longest, most significant route. Eventually, the trail went into what are now western South Dakota, North Dakota, eastern Wyoming and Montana.
The Texans found that, because of a colder climate in the Northern Plains, the short grass prairie locked in nutrients earlier than grasses do in the south, so the cattle gained weight quickly.
Range cattle boom
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Cattle moved from Texas through Oklahoma, Nebraska and Wyoming, and into what became North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. Here, a herd of Texas cattle graze near Dodge City, Kan., in 1878. (Courtesy of Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Campbell 1954)
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Some of the cattle were used to feed the mining population, the settlers and the military. Two important destinations were what is now called Old Fort Meade Cavalry Co., established in 1878 near Sturgis, S.D., (still a National Guard training center) and Fort Buford, near Williston, N.D, in force from 1866 to 1894.
The Northern Pacific Railroad reached what is now Bismarck, N.D., by 1873, where it paused for financial reorganization. North Dakota State University's Experiment Station archives indicate the first cattle ranch in the state was established west of the Missouri River in 1878. Several large cattle companies brought in Texas steers for summer grazing starting in 1881, archive documents say.
The railroad crossed the Missouri River in 1879 and made it into the Badlands by 1881. It met the eastward-building rail crew at Gold Creek, Mont., on Sept. 8, 1883.
Also In 1883, the Dickinson, N.D., rail siding recorded its first shipment of live animals, with 1,219 carloads of beef going to the Chicago market -- about 26,818 animals.
Dickinson became the main trade center in a 150-mile radius, with large cattle outfits shipping out stock, according to the Dickinson Museum Center.
Continental Land and Cattle Co. managed a herd of 60,000 head on the Montana-Dakota border in 1883, according to "An Uncommon Journey: A History of Old Dawson County, Montana Territory," by H. Norman Hyatt.
Famously, French nobleman Marquis De Mores, founded the town that is now Medora, N.D., in 1883. De Mores started a large meat packing plant in a year that recorded 300,000 cattle in the state. Future President Theodore Roosevelt, visiting the region to hunt buffalo, bought a cattle ranch in 1883.
Drought, harsh winter
In 1886, a one-two punch hit the industry. A dry summer was followed by a harsh winter that killed 75 to 80 percent of the cattle on the range, a factor that moved the industry toward smaller-scale grazing.
The Marquis' packing plant closed in 1886. Roosevelt pulled out in 1887. The last big cattle drive was in 1889, with 7,000 cattle shipped out, according to the NDSU archives.
Farther to the south, the Chicago and Northwestern Railway reached Belle Fourche, S.D., by 1891. By 1895, Belle Fourche was shipping 2,500 carloads of cattle per month in peak season, making it the world's largest livestock shipping point.
Eventually, the open range changed, as the trail shifted to the east of the Black Hills and barbed wire provided fencing.
The Heritage Center in Spearfish tells of a pivotal event that some called the "Big Roundup of 1902." A series of blizzards on the High Plains drove cattle to the west bank of the Missouri River. Open range ranchers were instructed to round up their cattle and return them to their home operations, or they'd lose ownership.
On May 25, 1902, some 450 cowboys -- each with six to 10 horses -- started at the confluence of the Big White and Little White rivers, gathered more than 40,000 head in three months and took them home.
Marking the trail
In an effort to call attention to this history, an ambitious historical trail marking project was started in 2003 by the Museum of the Western Prairie in Altus, Okla.
The Oklahomans, working with Texas cattle trail enthusiasts, set up concrete markers along the trail. Markers have been set as far south as Matamoros, Mexico, and as far north as Regina, Saskatchewan, and have gradually filled in between as interest in the project has developed.
The Heritage Center is hosting a five-state regional meeting for the trail marking project July 3 and 4. A national meeting is scheduled for July 17 to 19 in Altus.
The ultimate goal is to convince each state's tourism department to promote GPS maps to guide the public to the marker sites. The hope is the markers will raise interest in places such as the Heritage Center.
In a separate recognition effort, Congress passed a law, signed by President Barack Obama in 2009, that directed the National Park Service to study the feasibility of establishing the Chisholm Trail and the Great Western Cattle Trail as part of the National Trails System.
The National Park Service recently closed a comment period on a draft plan for the inclusion of these two trails. Officials must determine how much of the trail is available for interpretation, as well as cost and other factors. If the park service recommends it, Congress later this year could decide whether to authorize a plan that would add the trail to 30 existing national trails.
"A majority of these trails are on land that is privately owned and there is no obligation to participate," says Gretchen Ward, lead planner for the study at the National Park Service regional office in Santa Fe, N.M.
As currently proposed, the Chisholm Trail would go only as far north as Abilene, Kan., and the Great Western Cattle Trail to Ogallala, Neb.
READ THE ARTICLE HERE
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Thank you for your support of
The Cherry Blossom Sale
The 2016 Cherry Blossom Sale was another great success,
benefiting breeders across the country - especially on the East Coast.
A large crowd of eager breeders converged on the Culpeper Agricultural Enterprise that Saturday to see some of the best cattle ever offered at the Cherry Blossom Sale.
Many thanks to George & Laureen Gennin and Justin & Adrienne Henry,
who generously sponsored the open bar refreshments.
Sale Results
61 Lots sold for an average of $2,144.26
Volume Buyers:
- Tyson Leonard- 6 Lots for $30,700
- Lloyd Esh - 3 Lots for $7,900
- Gary Hershberger - 2 Lots for $5,700
High Selling Lots:
- DC Grande Dancer - $14,000
Consigned by Frank & Michelle Hevrdejs
Purchased by Tyson Leonard
- WPR Sassy Cat Too - $7,500
Consigned by Scott & Sandy Hughes
Purchased by Ricky McLeod
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IN OTHER TLMA NEWS!!
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Chewing the Cud
Old Jeb staggered into the emergency room with a concussion, multiple bruises, and a five iron wrapped around his neck.
Naturally, the doctor asks him what happened. "Well, it was like this" said Jeb. "I was having a quiet round of golf with my wife, when at a difficult hole, we both sliced our shots. The balls went off the course and into a pasture full of cows.
"Well, I climbed the fence to look for 'em, and while I was rooting around I looked over and seen one of them cows had something white in it's rear end, poor critter. I walked over and lifted up the tail, and sure enough, there was a golf ball with my wife's monogram on it stuck right in the middle of that big old cow's south end, if you know what I mean...That's when I made the BIG mistake."
"What did you do?", asked the doctor. "Well, I lifted the tail, pointed at the cow's big ol' rear end, and yelled to my wife, "Hey, honey! This looks like yours!"
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Like us on Facebook
So many have already been enjoying the International Texas Longhorn Association's Facebook page.
Visit it now and LIKE Us!
You will enjoy interesting pictures, history and happenings throughout the year.
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Click here to see the list of Events coming up this year!
Don't see your ITLA event listed?
Just drop us an email with all the details! Staff@itla.com
Thank You!
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Have you missed an e-Drover issue?
If you missed an article or needed to find the ad for sellers of high quality Longhorns, you can always check the archives of the e-Drover.
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New to Texas Longhorns?
There's so many good people who would love to help you get started!
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 Thank you for your continued support of the International Texas Longhorn Association's E-Drover. The E-Drover remains one of the most cost effective ways to reach Registered Texas Longhorn cattle owners and enthusiasts.
Be sure to advertise your ranch, cattle and other special events.
For the Love of Longhorns,
Kevin Trigueiro
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