The Great Western Cattle Trail is the name used today for a cattle trail established during the late 19th century for moving beef stock and horses to markets in eastern and northern states. It ran west of and roughly parallel to the better known Chisholm Trail into Kansas, reaching an additional major railhead there for shipping beef to Chicago, or longhorns and horses continuing on further north by trail to stock open-range ranches in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana in the United States, and Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada.[1]
Although rail lines were built in Texas, high freight prices for stock continued to make it more profitable to drive cattle north to the major east-west lines in Kansas.[2]
- ^ MacLaughlin, Ian (1996). "The Historical Development of Cattle Production in Canada". The University of Lethbridge. Archived from the original on June 5, 2024. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
- ^ Mahoney, Sylvia Gann (2015). Finding the Great Western Trail (1st ed.). LUbbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press. pp. 1–272. ISBN 9780896729438.