Shawnee Cattle Trail

The trail's end was a fight with farmers. The Handbook of Texas says longhorns carried ticks that spread what Missouri farmers called Texas fever to their own cattle, and in June 1853 farmers in western Missouri turned back a herd of 3,000. By 1855 vigilance committees were stopping herds and killing Texas cattle; Missouri banned diseased cattle that December, and Kansas passed its own law in 1859. After the war, Jayhawkers stampeded drover James M. Daugherty's herd in 1866 and killed a trail hand. Why it was called the Shawnee Trail, the Handbook says, is uncertain.

What the plaque says

Shawnee Cattle Trail In use from approximately 1850 to 1873, the Shawnee Cattle Trail was the first north-south cattle trail and reached the farthest east of the four great cattle-driving Trails from Texas to the northern markets. These included the Shawnee, Chisholm, Great Western and Goodnight-Loving trails. The Shawnee Trail passed through western Ellis County crossing the Brazos River at Waco, the Trinity River at Dallas and the Red River at Preston en route to Missouri. The trail was well-suited for cattle drives as Ellis County is situated within the Blackland Prairie. The prairie transitioned from gently rolling terrain to level ground in the central corridor, which provided an easy pathway for cattle transport. In the 19th century, the prairie provided an abundance of forage and water, which ensured safe passage for their journey north. Waxahachie, the Ellis County seat, was created in 1850 and was a supply stop on the trail. However, by 1855, an epidemic of Texas fever, also called tick fever, began to pass from unaffected Texas cattle to northern cattle. The fever ravaged cattle and enraged local stockmen, but the drives continued. Between 1861 and 1865, the cattle drives were all but discontinued due to the outbreak of the Civil War and laws that regulated infected Texas cattle. Famed cattle baron Joseph Geiting McCoy first used the Chisholm Trail in 1867, which followed the Shawnee Trail through Waco but then travelled west through Fort Worth. Although the Chisholm trail eventually became the major route for Texas cattle, drives up the Shawnee trail continued through 1873. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 11 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Hill County Courthouse — 20 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 29 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Cotton Industry in Ellis County — 0.9 mi
• Chambers' Creek — 3.0 mi
• Bethel Methodist Church — 3.8 mi
• Site of the Plantation Home of Edward H. Tarrant — 4.2 mi