Williamson County's cattle driving roots

Williamson County's cattle driving roots

Written by Chris Dyer Friday, 12 September 2008

A historical marker stands on the southwest corner of the courthouse lawn as a tribute to the determination of Williamson County’s cowboys.

In the 1930s, men who actually followed the train to the northern markets during the cattle boom strategically placed these “Going up the Texas Chisholm Trail” markers along the route of the Chisholm Trail in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Their purpose was simple: keep the memory of the great cattle drives alive in our minds.

In the late 1860s, longhorns sold for between $1 and $2 per head in Georgetown but could go for up to $20 per head in northern markets. Early Williamson County entrepreneurs like the Olive brothers, Cluck family, Greenup Kuykendall and the Snyder brothers seized this new business opportunity and earned substantial profits.

Newly unemployed soldiers needed work after the Civil War, and the perceived excitement of driving cattle north created the perfect partnership. Cattle saturated the Texas market, while the demand for beef in the rest of the country grew strong as people developed a taste for it. Longhorn cattle roamed free in the virtually unfenced expanse of Texas in the mid-1800s, available to anyone who had the courage to round them up and drive them to markets. Since railroads in the state were limited in scope, the only way to get the cattle to market was by hoof. The drive to market could extend upwards of two months on horseback if everything went right — which it seldom did.

One account provides a spectator’s view of a large cattle drive moving through Williamson County. John M. Sharpe wrote a narrative about the Snyder brothers included in The Trail Drivers of Texas compilation published in the 1920s. In the article, Sharpe recalls witnessing, “the splendid herd of five thousand beef cattle in its seemingly endless column pass, as he sat on a gate-post” in Georgetown. In his recollection, Sharpe witnessed Dudley Snyder’s last great drive to the northwest in 1885.

In the 1870s, the Georgetown Watchman reported that residents in town complained that their cattle were inadvertently added to the herds of trail drives passing through. It was pure chaos and very dusty when the cattle came through town.

Historians have long debated the route of the Chisholm Trail. Many believe that Jesse Chisholm, the namesake of the famous trail, did not venture south of the Red River in Oklahoma. George W. Saunders, organizer of the Old Time Trail Drivers’ Association, said “…most of the trail drivers did not care anything about the name of the trail they were traveling, as they were generally too busy to think or care about its name.” It is acceptable to call any trail headed through the heart of Texas to markets in Abilene and Kansas the Chisholm Trail. If a smaller feeder trail connected to the Chisholm Trail, go ahead and call it Chisholm Trail as well. The Chisholm Trail was just one of the many cattle trails through Texas, but is the most recognized today. According to Saunders, the debate is probably pointless anyway.

Chris Dyer is the director of The Williamson Museum, 716 S. Austin Ave. in Georgetown.