Chisholm, << CHIHZ uhm, >> Trail was a famous route that Texas cowboys used in driving cattle herds north to the railroads in Kansas. In 1866, Jesse Chisholm, a mixed-blood Cherokee Indian trader, drove a wagon through Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) to his trading post near Wichita, Kansas. A year later, cattle drivers followed Chisholm’s wagon tracks to Abilene, Kansas, and named the trail after him. The trail began about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) south of Abilene, near San Antonio, where herds of longhorn cattle abandoned by Mexican ranchers roamed wild. See Western frontier life in America (The cattle drive) .
The Chisholm Trail and its users are celebrated in Western stories and songs. Cowboys began a series of long trail drives in 1867 and moved about 11/2 million cattle over the trail in three years. They liked the route because it had no towns, hills, or wooded areas.
As the railroads moved west across the plains, settlers soon followed, and the route of the trail shifted westward. Ellsworth, 60 miles (97 kilometers) west of Abilene on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, and later Newton, farther south on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (now the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe) Railway, became terminal points for cattle drives between 1872 and 1875. Saloons, houses of prostitution, and gambling halls lined the streets of these “cow towns.” The cattle drives ended and the trail fell into disuse as the railroads pushed across the plains and farmers built fences on their homesteads.
