Chisholm Trail -- NB I-35 Bell County Safety Rest Area, Salado TX
N 30° 54.110 W 097° 33.567
14R E 637671 N 3419611
Salado was a well-known stop along the Chisholm Trail, a well used cattle drive route north from Texas to Kansas rail heads
Waymark Code: WMTK2Y
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 12/02/2016
Views: 2
Salado Texas is a long history along the Chisholm Trail in Texas. A well-known watering stop, cowboys and cows alike drink deeply from its rivers and creeks, and bedded down the soft grass that abounds in this rolling prairie part of Central Texas.
In 2015 Texas Department of transportation built and opened the Bell County safety rest area along the northbound I 35. Featuring interpretive signs and historical information of the local area, one sign discusses the Chisholm Trail, which passed nearby.
Sign reads as follows:
THE CHISHOLM TRAIL
If you had been here in the years following the Civil War, you might’ve seen one of the most dramatic sights in the history of the West. For along this way, came the enormous herds of Longhorn cattle on their way to market along the legendary Chisholm Trail. In his brief existence, from 1867 to 1884, more than 5 million Longhorns and a million Mustang horses followed the Chisholm. It was the greatest migration of livestock in history.
Longhorns were descendants of cattle brought over by the Spanish. During the Civil War, they were left to survive in the wilds of northern Mexico and southern Texas. They not only survived, they became extremely hardy, resistant to disease, drought, and predators. By the time cattlemen returned from the war, millions of these longhorns roamed the borderlands, a bonanza for anyone tough enough to drive them north to the railhead. According to the book Cowboy Culture - a Saga of Five Centuries, “260,000 head of cattle headed toward Kansas and Missouri that first spring and summer, but only about half reached their destination.”
The trail was named after Jesse Chisholm, a half Cherokee Indian trader, guide, and interpreter who ironically never drove cattle over the trail that bears his name. He did mark the route of the trail from the confluence of the Little and Big Arkansas Rivers to his trading post southwest of present-day Oklahoma City, but his business was in trade goods, not cattle. In his time, Chisholm was known mainly for his fluency in 14 different Indian dialects. He served as interpreter for Sam Houston at many councils in Texas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, often defusing potential conflicts between hostile cultures. He was universally known for his fairness and neutrality. His language skills helped him negotiate the freedom of children captured by the Comanche and Kiowa. Most of those were Mexican children, whom he adopted and raised as his own.
The Chisholm Trail was finally closed by barbed wire and an 1885 Kansas quarantine law. Jesse Chisholm died ingloriously in 1868 from eating rancid bear meat."
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