Description

National Historical Society [Published Date: 1994]. Hardcover, 296 pp. With drawings by Nick Eggenhofer. Originally published in 1954 by the University of Oklahoma Press, this reprint edition by the National Historical Society (1994) preserves Gard's authoritative text and Eggenhofer's illustrations. Very good / NO dust jacket. Maroon cloth covered boards with gold lettering on spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Black and white illustrations. Chronicles the history of the Chisholm Trail, which became a critical pathway for cattle drives from Texas to Kansas in the post-Civil War era. Contents include: Mavericks in the Brush, Reaching for Markets, Trouble at the Border, Man of Enterprise, Opening the Way, Beef on the Hoof, Prairie Convoys, Hazards of the Long Drive, Bellowing Herds, High Jinks in Abilene, Rival Cow Towns, Prosperity and Panic, Grassland Empire, New Tracks in the West, Songs of the Punchers, Barbed-Wire Barriers, Bibliography, and Index. [From Foreword] For more than a dozen tempestuous years, beginning in 1867, the Chisholm Trail was the Texas cowhand's road to high adventure. It held the excitement of sudden stampedes, hazardous river crossings, and brushes with Indian marauders. It promised, at the end of the drive, hilarious celebration in the saloons, gambling parlors, and dance halls of frontier Kansas towns. "I woke up one morning on the old Chisholm Trail, Rope in my hand and a cow by the tail, Feet in the stirrups and seat in the saddle, I hung and rattled with them Longhorn cattle." For others the Chisholm Trail meant more than rousing experiences. It carried what probably was the greatest migration of domestic animals in world history. In a period when Texas still lacked railroads for shipping its surplus cattle to northern markets, the trail to Kansas served an urgent need. This pathway, which took the imprints of several million Longhorns, helped Texas dig herself out of the poverty that followed the Civil War. It also spurred railroad construction in the West and the Southwest. . .