Old Chisholm Trail

Jesse Chisholm, whose name the trail carries, was a translator, negotiator and trader of Scottish and Cherokee descent. His trade route ran about 220 miles, and surveys of 1871 to 1873 applied his name to only about 80 of them. The name first appeared in print in April 1869, a year after he died. The Handbook of Texas dates the cattle-driving years to 1867 through 1884 and estimates 5.2 million head left Texas from 1866 to 1884, a figure it warns varies widely, and says drovers usually used other names for the road.

What the plaque says

Old Chisholm Trail From site near here, 1800 Longhorns were moved out April 1, 1866, on first trail drive from this area to northern markets. Crockett Cardwell, owner of cattle bedground, had gathered the herd. The trail boss was Thornton Chisholm, a native of DeWitt County. Indian Scout Jesse Chisholm in 1865 had marked the upper trail from the North Canadian to the Arkansas River. Road here became a prong of the famous ChisholmTtrail, going past Gonzales, San Marcos, Austin, Round Rock, Georgetown, Gatesville, Glen Rose and Red River Station, into Indian territory. The 30 men of this 1866 drive to St. Joseph, Mo., were gone 7 months, 10 days. The cook and many of the men made numerous later drives; but Thornton Chisholm died in 1868. 260,000 cattle - accumulated in Texas in 4 years of Civil War - went in 1866 up the Chisholm Trail, a flood channel from a vast reservoir of beef. Sold in northern markets or to the U.S. Government to feed Indians on reservations or soldiers in forts, the trailed cattle helped Texas recover from the war. From 1866 to 1895 at least 10,000,000 cattle were driven up the Chisholm Trail by courageous Texas cowboys - the greatest movement of animals under the control of men in all history. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 2.8 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 22 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 28 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 28 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• Site of Friar-Cardwell Stage Stand — steps away
• Site of Cameron, First County Seat of DeWitt County — 1.9 mi
• Charles Goodwin Breeden — 2.5 mi
• Judge Henry Clay Pleasants — 2.5 mi