Old Beef Trail Crossing

Most herds over crossings like this were moved by contract drovers, who for $1 to $1.50 a head walked cattle north for owners who stayed home; they handled as much as 90 percent of trail traffic from 1866 to 1890. A contract herd of up to 3,000 head employed about eleven people. About two-thirds were White youths of twelve to eighteen, called waddies, while cooks and horse wranglers were often Black, Hispanic or American Indian men. Grazing ten to fifteen miles a day, a herd reached market in about six weeks.

What the plaque says

Old Beef Trail Crossing Once used for revivals, this Llano River crossing became a main line of the spring cattle drives from 1867 to the 1880s. Capt. C.A. Schreiner and his partners herded cattle on their way to Abilene and Dodge City on the Western Trail; many area cowboys rode with them. Preceded by a trail boss and chuckwagon, as many as 2,000 cattle per herd took half a day to cross. With the air full of dust, local ranchers sat on their horses watching their own cattle closely to ensure that none of their herd joined the trail drive. This site later became a vehicle crossing. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kimble County Historical Museum — 12 mi
  A free county museum in Junction, the town at the meeting of the North and South Llano, with the papers, photographs and tools of a ranching county.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 16 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.
• Fort Mason — 24 mi
  A reconstructed officers' quarters on Post Oak Hill above Mason, standing where the army's stone fort was taken apart by the town that grew up below it.
• Presidio de San Saba — 26 mi
  The ruins of the largest Spanish presidio in Texas, built in 1757 to guard a mission to the Lipan Apache, where the Comanche and their allies first turned back Spain's frontier.

More markers nearby

• John L. Jones Ranch — 2.7 mi
• Site of Ivy Chapel and School — 2.8 mi
• Teacup Mountain — 5.8 mi
• London Post Office — 6.2 mi