Texas Trail Canyon

The last seasons of this trail owed something to Kansas. On March 7, 1885, Kansas closed itself to Texas trail cattle with a quarantine, and drovers swung west on the National Trail, crossing the Arkansas River into Colorado. That spring Mart Culver, a Corpus Christi cattleman, platted Trail City beside the crossing to serve the herds, and I. P. Olive, the Print Olive of the Custer County troubles, put money into a hotel and a livery there. He was shot dead in a Trail City saloon by Joe Sparrow. After the blizzard of 1886 the town dried up.

What the plaque says

Texas Trail Canyon After the slaughter of the buffalo and the last of the Indian hunts, ranchers moved into this part of the Republican River country in 1875. Among them were I. P. and Ira Olive, who were using this canyon on their range in 1876. Herds of Texas cattle were delivered to them here before being driven north to Ogallala. Prior to 1880, the main Texas-Ogallala Trail entered Nebraska fifty miles east of here, but, with the influx of homesteaders, the trail was pushed west to this area. By 1881 this canyon was known as Texas Trail Canyon, and a checkpoint was established here in 1883-84, where the cattle were checked for brands and disease. It is said that 150,000 cattle were moved through here in 1886, the last year of the trail drives. A number of pioneer burials were made in the immediate vicinity, beginning with Mexican Leon, a cowboy killed in a fight with Ira Olive. When the railroad built through in 1881-82, a worker was killed and buried 100 yards east of here. Remains of several unidentified pioneers, adults and children, have been discovered over the years, and they were reinterred here in 1971. Dundy County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arikaree Breaks — 5.2 mi
  A strip of loess canyons two or three miles wide cut across the northwest corner of Kansas, followed by a signed gravel tour north of St. Francis into Nebraska and back.
• Beecher Island Battleground — 20 mi
  A battlefield whose island is gone: the veterans' memorial of 1905 washed away in the flood of 1935, its pieces reset on the riverbank, the reunion still held every September.

More markers nearby

• General Custer in Nebraska — 17 mi
• Ward Bond's Boyhood Home — 17 mi
• Nature's Gift: The Highway 34 Springs — 18 mi
• Prisoners of War in Dundy County — 20 mi