Pioneer Trail Drivers of Seguin and Guadeloupe County - Seguin, Texas
Posted by: 
iconions
N 29° 34.067 W 097° 57.863
14R E 600315 N 3271341
This red granite boulder commemorates the men from Seguin and Guadeloupe County who drove cattle north. The marker is on the western side of Central Park - River, Austin, Donegan, and Nolte Streets in Seguin, Texas.
Waymark Code: WMZCHY
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 10/19/2018
Views: 4
The text of the marker reads:
"Cattle Trail
to
Kansas
1866 (picture of the head of a Longhorn) 1887
Dedicated to the Memory of
and in Tribute to the Pioneer
Trail Drivers of
Seguin and Guadeloupe Co."
Text of brass dedication plaque:
"City of Seguin
Roger W. Moore, Mayor
Aldermen
H. F. Bargfrede Herman Kunkel
Ellen Bryan Earl R. Martin
Louis Elley A. J. Traeger
H. A. Ernst Roy Voyges
Mrs. Bettie Harrington, Secretary
R.J. Burges, Jr. Treasurer
Max Bergfeld Marshall
Arno Breustedt Tax Ass. & Collector
O. E. Threlkeld Attorney"
This red granite boulder commemorates the Cattle Trail to Kansas (Chisolm Trail) 1866-1887. Seguin was one of the main starting terminus locales for the trail moving Texas Longhorn beef cattle from Seguin and other ranch towns south along the cattle trail north to the end Kansas rail terminus at Abilene and towns further west. More information on the trail can be found at the Texas Time Travel website on the Chisolm Trial -
- Link :
"By the end of the Civil War, Texas hadn’t much left to offer a newly united country…except BEEF! Historians have long debated aspects of the Chisholm Trail’s history, including the exact route and even its name. Although a number of cattle drive routes existed in 19th century America, none have penetrated the heart of popular imagination like the Chisholm Trail, especially in Texas.
As early as the 1840s, Texas cattlemen searched out profitable markets for their longhorns, a hardy breed of livestock descended from Spanish Andalusian cattle brought over by 16th century explorers, missionaries, and ranchers. But options for transporting the cattle were few. The solution lay north, where railroads could carry livestock to meat packing centers and customers throughout the populated east and far west. Enter Joseph G. McCoy from Illinois, who convinced the powers-that-be at the Kansas Pacific Railway company to allow him to build a cattle-shipping terminal in Abilene, Kansas.
The new route cattle drivers used to push the longhorn to Kansas shipping points became known as the Chisholm Trail, named for Jesse Chisholm, a Scot-Cherokee trader who had established the heart of the route while transporting his trade goods to Native American camps, and it eventually inspired the link between the great movement of longhorns from South Texas to central Kansas to the Chisholm name. Before the Chisholm was shut down in the late 1880s (by a combination of fences and a Texas fever quarantine) the trail accommodated more than five million cattle and more than a million wild mustangs, considered the largest human-driven animal migration in history."