Great Western Cattle Trail

History

In 1874, John T. Lytle and Tom M. McDaniel set out from Lytle's Medina County, Texas ranch with a government contract to drive 3,500 older steers to the newly formed Red Cloud Indian Agency in western Nebraska. To reach this remote destination, Lytle blazed a new path that passed through Fort Griffin in Texas, Camp Supply in Indian Territory, and Dodge City, Kansas. Other cattle outfits soon followed this route, and it became known as the Western Trail.

A Kansas quarantine law passed in 1875 closed rail depots in the eastern part of the state, which boosted the growth of Dodge City and Ogallala, Nebraska as major cattle towns. Between 1875 and 1880, the Chisholm Trail, also called the Eastern Trail, served as a feeder route into the Western Trail. Additional feeder routes came from Brownsville, San Antonio, Bandera, and the Kerrville area in Texas. Cattle crossed the Red River at Doan's Crossing.

In 1881, Doan recorded the trail's busiest year, with 301,000 head of cattle passing through. The XIT Ranch used a western extension of the trail for drives from Tascosa to Dodge City until 1885. After that, the northern part of the trail ran from Buffalo Springs to the XIT range on Cedar Creek, sixty miles north of Miles City, Montana, passing through Lamar, Kit Carson, and Lusk. This section was used from 1886 to 1897.

Over a three-month period, between 10,000 and 12,500 steers were moved a thousand miles north from the Yellow Houses at the XIT Ranch's southern end to Cedar Creek, where they grazed for two years before being shipped to Chicago.