The Chisholm Trail: The History and Legacy of 19th Century America's Most Famous Cattle Drive Route

Around the time that the Civil War ended in 1865, the open ranges of south Texas were full of the cattle, known as longhorns. Hundreds of thousands of the distinctive steer, with their horns spanning as much as seven feet from tip to tip, roamed free on the range, so cattle ranchers took advantage of the bounty and claimed the wild longhorns as their own. With a beef shortage on the East Coast, the demand for cattle was high, so the ranchers just needed to get the cattle north from Texas to...