Great Western Trail

John T. Lytle laid out this route in 1874, beyond the western edge of settlement, and it became the drovers' favorite once the Red River War ended in 1875 and the Army drove the Comanche and Kiowa onto a reservation. Herds forded the Red River at Doan's Crossing, where Corwin Doan's trading post counted more than three hundred thousand longhorns passing in 1881. Traffic fell sharply after 1891, and John Blocker's 1894 drive from West Texas to South Dakota is the last recorded use. Carl N. Tyson's encyclopedia count puts the total at more than two million head.

What the plaque says

Great Western Trail In 1874, the cattle ranchers of the San Antonio, Texas area began blazing a trail with their large herds of longhorn cattle through western Indian Territory to the railhead at Dodge City, Kansas and to markets beyond into Canada and the Northwest Territories of America. It's estimated that over 11,000,000 head of longhorns passed over this trail on which you now stand. The trail's wake is marked only by a long sequence of depressions worn into the land by the millions of hooves that traveled it. An instance of one of these depressions is visible just to the back of this marker as a long "U" shaped notch running through the rounded sandy ridge. The Cherokee Strip (located just over one mile north) opened to homesteading in 1893, imposing a barrier that meant the end of the cattle drives.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• California Road — 31 mi