After the Civil War, Texas ranchers using the Chisholm Trail started on the route from either the Rio Grande or San Antonio, joined the Chisholm Trail at the Red River of the South at the border between Texas and Oklahoma, and continued to the railhead of the Kansas Pacific Railway in Abilene, Kansas, where the cattle would be sold and shipped eastward. The trail is named for Jesse Chisholm, a half-Cherokee trader from Tennessee, who originally created the trail as a means to transport his goods from one trading post to another.[1]
In 1867 the first drive was made to Caldwell and on to Winfield, Kansas. The trail in its beginning was approximately 220 miles long, but in its life of almost two decades, it was lengthened to about 800 miles - from San Antonio in Texas to Abilene in Kansas.