Includes index.

Bibliography: pages 189-199.

Of all the routes by which cattle reached the northern ranges in the American West of the ninteenth century, the Chisholm Trail was the most used and by far rhe best known. Its name came from the Scot-Indian trader Jesse Chisholm who, in 1865, began hauling trade goods in wagons from his post near the future site of Wichita, Kansas, to Indian camps on the North Carolina River, about 220 miles south. Although it was open for less than two decades, millions of cattle traveled north over the Chisholm Trail. Soon the name was applied indiscriminately to any route cattle flowed out of Texas. Later cowmen gave Chisholm's name to the entire distance between San Antonio and the Kansas railroads. But for nearly twenty years trail bosses, cowboys, and cooks drove longhorns up Jesse Chisholm"s trail. Illustrated with thirty-six contemporary photographs, and written by one of the most respected experts on the American West, the Chisholm Trail is their story.