Trail City/Arkansas River/Welcome to Colorado/Holly Country-Holly, CO - Colorado Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Panel 1: Trail City

"At frontier towns where are centered many cattle...there are always to be found a number of bad characters, both male and female; of the very worst class in the universe, such as have fallen below the level of the lowest type of the brute creation." - Joseph McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest, 1874

Faced with a Kansas quarantine on their cattle, Texas ranchers began driving their herds through eastern Colorado in 1885. That year over 184,000 head of cattle passed through tiny Trail City, which sat on the Kansas line just north of the Arkansas River. Northbound trail riders got their first paychecks here, and they took full advantage of the thirty-odd saloons, gambling houses, and brothels built for their enjoyment. Shockingly sinful even by Wild West standards, Trail City produced enough drunkenness, violence, and debauchery to shame towns many times it size. Its location made Trail City a haven for criminals, who could slip across the state line as necessary to elude lawmen. But by 1890, the cattle drives had ended, and this Sodom on the prairie abruptly vanished.

"I was a lot of hard work on the range but very little shooting. In fact, form '85 on...there never was but one shooting scrape, and then nobody got killed." - E. C. Abbott, 1959

Knights of the frontier they weren't. With all due respect to John Wayne, the average cowboy was an exhausted, homesick lad who could do two things exceedingly well - ride and herd. Usually in his teens or early twenties, perhaps African American or Mexican, this well-trained, disciplined employee was charged with moving $100,000 worth of live merchandise over one thousand miles of wilderness. Though watchful for Indians and outlaws, the cowboy fought most of his battles against boredom, fatigue, ornery steers, lightning storms, and the dust kicked up by the ten thousand hooves. For his exertions he received from $25 to $40 per month. Town stopovers did tend to get rowdy, but what the cowboy craved most - more than drink, more than women - was a bath and a shave.

Panel 2: Arkansas River

For centuries the Arkansas was a divided river. Indian nations waged ongoing battles over this life-sustaining resource, vying for access to its water and its fertile hunting grounds. Over time an uneasy balance emerged - the Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches generally to the south, the Cheyennes and Arapahos more to the north. Later the Arkansas ran through the center of colonial struggles, marking the boundary between New Spain and New France, and later between the United States and Mexico. Each party jealously guarded its own side of this line in the sand; crossing it was tantamount to an act of war. Not until 1848, when the United States took the present American Southwest from Mexico, did a single flag fly over both banks of the Arkansas.
Though no longer an international boundary, the Arkansas has remained the subject of fierce competition. Massive irrigation projects along the river turned wild grasslands into orchards and beet fields and later helped spur the growth of Front Range cities. However, Colorado used so much water that the Arkansas nearly ceased to flow by the time it reached the state line. In 1907 Kansas filed suit, claiming that Colorado was depriving its neighbors of their fair share of Arkansas River water. After many decades and several court cases, the issue remained in dispute, but this much had been settled: the Arkansas does not offer an infinite water supply. Unfortunately, the limits on water use may be set by the Arkansas itself.

From the Colorado high country, the Arkansas River flows 1,459 miles through several states and empties into the Mississippi River.

Panel 3: Welcome to Colorado

Colorado's vast plains, rugged mountains, and grand plateaus, so magnificent in their beauty and variety, seem at times to overshadow the state's history and people. But look closely. The story of Colorado is every bit as dramatic as the physical terrain. Many peoples have helped sculpt Colorado's past: the Anasazi, whose civilization dates back thousands of years; the Utes, who occupied the Rockies for centuries; the numerous other native peoples who lived in this region; Hispano pioneers, the state's first permanent non-Indian settlers; and the men and women who came here and built cities, dug mines, and planted farms. Colorado's natural endowment is world-renowned. But the state's history, like the land on which it unfolds, features its own breathtaking peaks and valleys, its own scenes of improbable awe and splendor.
A new generation of roadside markers is in place to help you experience the history of Colorado in all its color and fullness. Produced by the Colorado Historical Society, the Colorado Department of Transportation, and the Federal Highway Administration, in collaboration with local partners, these illustrated signs introduce you to people and events as large and colorful as the state itself. Every mile you travel in Colorado has stories to tell; the markers help you chart your journey through the past. For an in depth view, visit the Colorado History Museum in Denver, the Colorado Historical Society's various regional museums, and the county and local museums found throughout Colorado.

Panel 4: Holly Country

An area map of various sites of interest.

Group or Groups Responsible for Placement: Colorado Historic Society Colorado Department of Transportation County or City: Prowers County Date Dedicated: 1997 Check here for Web link(s) for additional information: [Web Link]

Visit Instructions:
In your log, please say if you learned something new or if you were able to take any extra time to explore the area once you stopped at the historic marker waymark. If possible, please post a photo of you at the marker OR your GPS at the marker location OR some other creative way to prove you visited. If you know of any additional links not already mentioned about this bit of Colorado history, go ahead and include that in your log!

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Date Logged Log User Rating   12/28/2022 The Snowdog visited it 04/08/2015 Markerman62 visited it

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