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Longhorn Sighting
This is why you take drives in the country!
This pic was the winning entry in the AAA Texas magazine's photo contest. It was submitted by ITLA member Regina Guthrie, and the photo was taken by her husband Guthrie. Boogity is owned by Regina's sister-in-law in Bedias, TX, and his markings remind them of a stick family. Boogity also reminds people why they love to take drives in the country!
Have you captured a Longhorn moment that should be shared?
Send us your favorite unique Longhorn photos! We would love to share some of them here in the ITLA's E-Drover.
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The 2016 Longhorn World Championship Sale
at the Longhorn Extravaganza
Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City, OK
October 14, 2016
Join us on Friday of the Longhorn Extravaganza as the TLMA hosts the 2016 Longhorn World Championship Sale.
We would like to personally invite you to consign your finest cattle, to what is sure to be an outstanding sale.
Some fantastic consignments have already come in, and some more have been promised. Don't miss your opportunity to be involved in another outstanding Longhorn World Championship Sale.
We thank you for your help and continued support to unite our great industry.
For More Information:
Texas Longhorn Marketing Alliance | 512-734-3501
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OLD WEST LEGENDS
The Shawnee Trail - Driving Longhorns to Missouri
Cattle Trail Map courtesy Heritage Farmstead Museum
Also known as the Texas Road, the Sedalia Trail, or the Kansas Trail, the Shawnee Trail was a major trade and emigrant route from Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Blazed along the paths of old Indian trails and military roads, Texas cattle were driven up the trail as early as the 1840s.
In fact, it is the earliest and easternmost route by which Texas Longhorn cattle were taken to the north from Austin, Waco, and Dallas Texas, crossing the Red River near Preston, Texas before following a path along the Grand River in present-day Oklahoma to Fort Gibson. From there, the trail split into several branches ending Baxter Springs, Kansas and St. Louis, Sedalia, Independence, and Westport, Missouri. It is unknown why it was called the Shawnee Trail, but it has been suggested that it was named for a Shawnee Indian village on the Red River.
Use of the Shawnee Trail gradually increased, but, as more and more cattle moved northward, so did a cattle disease that was soon called "Texas Fever". The longhorn cattle appeared to be perfectly healthy, but Midwestern cattle allowed to mix with them or to use a pasture recently vacated by the longhorns, sometimes became ill and often died. This was determined in 1853 after Texas cattle had been sold in Sarcoxie County, Missouri in the winter of 1852. Also called Spanish Fever, it was later determined that ticks were spreading the disease to the local cattle but the longhorns were immune to it. As a result, in June, 1853, when some 3,000 longhorns were being driven up the Shawnee Trail in Missouri, local farmers blocked their passage and forced them back the way they came.
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Shawnee Trail sculpture in Pioneer Plaza, Dallas, TX photo:truewestmagazine.com
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Texas Longhorns
Though use of the trail continued, many drovers avoided the blockades, which gave rise to stronger and more effective means of blocking them, including vigilance committees and political wrangling. By December of 1855, the Missouri Legislature banned diseased cattle from being brought into or through the state. However, the ban was ineffective because the longhorn cattle were not themselves diseased. Farmers once again took matters in their own hands, often turning back the herds. Others began to drive their cattle through eastern Kansas, but soon met the same opposition and the Sunflower State passed its own protective law.
Parts of the trail would also serve stage coach lines, most significantly -- Butterfield's Overland Mail between the years 1857 to 1861. When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Texas cattle were no longer allowed to be shipped northward, effectively cutting off the income and much of the economy of the Confederate state of Texas. At that time there was little travel on the Shawnee Trail with exception of its use as a military road by both Union and Confederate Armies. In addition to moving supplies and troops along the pathway, two battles were fought along the route including the Battle of Honey Springs northeast of present-day Checotah, Oklahoma and the Battle of Baxter Springs in Kansas.
When the war was finally over, there was a large abundance of Texas cattle -- some five million head -- roaming the ranches of the Lone Star State. With no railroads to ship them to market, the cattle were worth only $3 to $4 a head. In the meantime, there was a pent-up demand for beef in the northern and eastern states where the going rate was 10 times that amount. Realizing the immense profits to be made, Texas cattlemen began searching for the nearest rail heads. However, this would not be as easy as it might seem.
In the spring of 1866 drovers were wrangling an estimated 200,000 to 260,000 longhorns northward from Texas. While many were turned back or severely delayed due to Texas Fever, some drovers diverted their herds around the hostile settlements getting their cattle to market and making large profits. One of those caught in the net of vigilantes was a young man named James M. Daugherty.
In 1865, when Daugherty was just 15 years old, he went to work for a man named James Adams, one of the most extensive cattle raisers in Southwestern Texas. In the Spring of 1866, he was tasked with driving a herd of 500 head from his employer up to Sedalia, Missouri, then the terminus of the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
It was a particularly dangerous undertaking in the unsettled condition of the country, but it was necessary that the cattle should reach a market, and Mr. Adams had faith in young Dougherty's ability to carry them through if any one could do so. The story of the drive, as told by Daugherty shows what difficulties the Texas cattlemen had to contend with in marketing their cattle in the days when a fear of the introduction of Texas Fever was often assumed by unscrupulous people as an excuse for their own lawless actions. Driving his slow moving herd northward, Daugherty crossed the Red River and picked his way through the Arkansas Mountains to Fort Smith, in order to avoid payment of the exorbitant taxes assessed by the Indians upon herds passing through their Territory. This part of the trip was accomplished in safety and the southern Kansas-Missouri border was reached. But, he and the other drovers were far from safe. Before long they were attacked by a band of Jayhawkers dressed in buckskin and had on coonskin caps, and all armed, who told them the cattle could go no further North. The attackers stampeded the herd, killed one of the drovers, and tied Daugherty to a tree. In the end, Dougherty was able to recover about 350 head of the cattle and ended up selling them in Fort Scott, Kansas for a profit.
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Shawnee Trail sculpture in Frisco, TX. photo: allacrosstexas.com
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But the days of cattle blazing the Shawnee Trail were virtually over. In the first half of 1867 six states enacted laws against trailing, and Texas cattlemen knew that something else would have to be done. At about this time, a young livestock dealer named Joseph G. McCoy conceived the idea of establishing a shipping depot for cattle at some point in the west and knew that the railroad companies were interested in expanding their freight operations. He soon selected Abilene, Kansas, and opened the Abilene Trail through Indian Territory from Texas.
As the developing railheads moved westward, more and more cowtowns would be born including Ellsworth, Caldwell, Wichita, and Dodge City, most of which developed a reputation as wild and wooly frontier towns.
© Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, January, 2016.
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SHAWNEE TRAIL
Cattle Traveled Near Harrison Street Long Before Settlers Arrived
OKLAHOMA - There really was a period in the 19th century when thousands of Longhorn cattle pounded a trail up from Texas, en route to Kansas, and paralleled today's Harrison Street.
A time when cowboys may have pitched camp, lit campfires and ate chuck wagon suppers after fording the North Canadian River directly south of today's Santa Fe Depot, on their way up the West Shawnee Trail.
Those days will be recalled during the third annual Shawnee Trail Days observance from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, June 18, in downtown Shawnee. Planners are completing scheduling details right now.
The Old West-themed festivities originated from talks by Bill Ford of Shawnee Milling Company, a business that's been in Shawnee and the Ford family since 1906, and Dr. Robert Barnard, Shawnee historian and veteran Shawnee educator now retired.
The two civic leaders talked about the origin of the Shawnee trails that crossed the Red River into today's Oklahoma before and immediately after the Civil War. Ford said in a Countywide & Sun story about the trails, published just before the first Trail Days in June 2014, that he and Dr. Barnard "wanted kids to know" that phase of this area's history.
"They started before the Civil War and went on until about 1880," Ford said at that time, of the cattle drives that came up the Shawnee Trail.
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"The cowboys started in central Texas, when the Mexicans left cows behind after the Mexican War," Dr. Barnard said in the 2014 article. "They decided to ship the cows to the East where people wanted beef," he said.
"There were three Shawnee Trails," Dr. Barnard said. "East Shawnee Trail was the first one, there was a middle trail and a west one. The west one was the last one."
Now, Dr. Barnard has delved even deeper into the history of the Shawnee Trails. "People need to know why cows were there," he said Monday.
"The original movement of people to settle in Texas were English. Spain originally took over most of (today's) Texas. Spanish and Mexicans integrated. Spain sent cattle to those people. They turned out to be the Texas Longhorns. This was in the 1700s, after England had settled the East coast.
"Here come these cows. The Spanish people raised them. For a long time south Texas had an awful lot of cattle. The Texas settlers began to move over the Spanish. The cattle stayed into the early 1800s."
READ THE ARTICLE HERE AT COUNTYWIDE NEWS |
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City augments 'authenticity' draw with cattle drive
Texas Longhorn cattle are driven along Polk Street in downtown Amarillo on their way to the Tri-State Fairgrounds during the Coors Cowboy Club Cattle Drive Thursday, June 2, 2016. Sean Steffen / Amarillo Globe-NewsSean Steffen / Amarillo Globe-NewsTexas
By ROBERT STEIN
robert.stein@amarillo.com
Once a difficult and dusty necessity in the 19th-century old west, today's cattle drives have evolved into a tourist spectacle in Texas.
The City of Fort Worth, which markets itself as "Where the West begins" and part of the top destination for tourism in Texas, holds a drive twice daily in its Stockyards National Historic District. Every detail "from the saddles and chaps to the boots and hats - is authentic and historically true," reads a page on the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau website.
And mid-sized cities, like Amarillo, Abilene and Lubbock, have used the same playbook when promoting tourism in their cities.
Amarillo - motto: "Step into the Real Texas" - hosted the Coors Cowboy Club Cattle Drive on Thursday evening, which saw 60 longhorn cattle herded through downtown Amarillo to the fairgrounds.
Hundreds of people lined Polk Street, cheering and snapping photographs as the longhorns passed by, some encouraged by a photo and video contest that offered prizes of $500.
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Texas Longhorn cattle are driven along Polk Street in downtown Amarillo on their way to the Tri-State Fairgrounds during the Coors Cowboy Club Cattle Drive Thursday, June 2, 2016.
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All glimpsed a bit of Amarillo history.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, cattle were frequently driven through town and up Polk Street to railroad depots on the north end of town, said Eric Miller, spokesman for Amarillo Convention and Visitor Council, which coordinated the event.
"What we're doing is kind of a small version of what was a very regular and very important occurrence for this city," he added.
While the drive - only in its third year - isn't the same caliber of tourist attraction as the Fort Worth event, it does kick off the 29th annual Coors Cowboy Club Ranch Rodeo. The two-day rodeo draws people from around the country and even beyond, said Tod Mayfield, chairman of the rodeo and a local attorney.
"In other countries, everybody knows what the shape of Texas means," Mayfield said. "They think it's all cattle and oil wells, and we want to give them that old Western heritage."
READ THE ARTICLE HERE
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Chisholm Trail-150th Anniversary
September 2 - 4, 2016 will kickoff the first annual Trails, Rails and Tales event to celebrate the rough and tumble, wild and woolly days of the lawless West. It is a party thrown in the spirit of Joseph McCoy's first cattle drive.
ABILENE, KANSAS - The legacy of Chisholm and McCoy will be carried on through education. Symposiums, re-enactments and books will drive the energy and excitement toward the Labor Day Weekend Event.
September 2-4 of 2016 will kickoff the first annual Trails, Rails and Tales event to celebrate the rough and tumble, wild and woolly days of the lawless West. It is a party thrown in the spirit of Joseph McCoy's first cattle drive.
McCoy arrived in Abilene on July 1, 1867, and within two short months, he was able to transform a quiet whistle stop town, into a bustling Cowtown filling our streets with drovers, gamblers, cowboy legends, aristocratic ranchers and tourists wanting to catch a view of Wild Bill, Jesse James or John Wesley Hardin. Abilene was the best advertised small town in America.
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Chisholm Trail 150th Anniversary
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from chisholmtrail150.org
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Ride the Chisholm Trail as is it celebrates the 150th anniversary of the first cattle that "headed north to Abilene." Over the next 20 years, millions of head of cattle travelled the route in the largest man made migration of animals in history. Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas historical centers invite you along to follow the trail as it crisscrosses Highway 81 from south Texas to Abilene, Kansas.
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Chewing the Cud
Many years ago during my married days, I accidentally overturned my golf cart right in front of the beverage bar located near the 12th green.
The bartender heard the crash and looked up and immediately yelled and asked if I was okay.
"I'm okay, thanks," I replied as I pulled myself out of the twisted cart.
"Man, that's gotta hurt, why don't you come get a drink and take the edge off those injuries. I'll help you get the cart up later."
"That's mighty nice of you," I answered, "but I don't think my wife would want me to."
"Oh, come on now," he insisted. "Get over here and have a couple drinks."
He was very polite and very persuasive ... and so I looked at the wreck and looked back at him, and finally gave in. "Well okay," I finally agreed and thought to myself, "but my wife won't like it."
After a couple of restorative beverages, I did feel better and thanked him for his kindness and hospitality. "I feel a lot better now, but I know my wife is really going to be upset. So I'd best go now."
"Don't be silly!" he said, "she'll be glad you're okay. By the way, where is she?"
"Still under the cart, I guess."
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Like us on Facebook
So many have already been enjoying the International Texas Longhorn Association's Facebook page.
You will enjoy interesting pictures, history and happenings throughout the year.
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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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