The Old Chisholm Trail: From Cow Path to Tourist Stop by Wayne Ludwig
2020; Volume: 40; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/gpq.2020.0022
ISSN2333-5092
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis
ResumoReviewed by: The Old Chisholm Trail: From Cow Path to Tourist Stop by Wayne Ludwig Daniel T. Gresham The Old Chisholm Trail: From Cow Path to Tourist Stop. By Wayne Ludwig. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2018. ix + 286 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $37.00, cloth. Where exactly was the Chisholm Trail? According to Wayne Ludwig, resident historian of the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, the answer requires untangling fact from folklore. In The Old Chisolm Trail: From Cow Path to Tourist Stop, Ludwig traces the trail's evolution and seeks to settle the debate about "whether the Chisholm Trail was known as such along the entire route from south Texas to the destination in Kansas, or whether it was known as the Chisholm Trail only from a point north of the Red River to the destination in Kansas" (132). Using historical maps, newspapers, public documents, and other sources such as the proceedings of the Trail Drovers Association and the Texas and Oklahoma Highway Commission records, Ludwig concludes that during its period of use, the Chisholm Trail did not extend into Texas. Instead, he shows that drovers, cartographers, and most journalists of the era identified it as a path between the Red River on the Oklahoma-Texas border to Abilene, Kansas. In The Old Chisholm Trail, Ludwig differentiates the Chisholm from other Southern Plains cattle trails and describes its rise to prominence. Many chapters examine one or more trails, succinctly detail their development, and painstakingly outline their routes. One chapter helpfully disentangles the life stories and trails blazed by Jesse Chisholm's confusingly named contemporaries, Thornton Chisholm and John Chisum. The final chapters partly explain how the Chisholm name was misapplied to Texas [End Page 170] trails. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Chisholm Trail caught the popular imagination, and Texas boosters appropriated the name to attract tourists. In the twenty-first century, even the National Park Service contemplated designating the Chisholm Trail from southern Texas to Abilene, Kansas, as a national historic trail (which the agency approved in May 2019). Regrettably, some chapters, like those regarding life on the trails and the characteristics of Longhorns, stray from or are not clearly related to the main argument. Also, certain questions, as Ludwig admits, remain unanswered, such as why maps after 1890 showed the Chisholm Trail extending into Texas. Despite these shortcomings, The Old Chisholm Trail contributes to the literature on the cattle industry and the Great Plains by resolving deep-rooted misunderstandings about the trail—pairing well with recent works such as James Sherow's environmental history, The Chisholm Trail: Joseph McCoy's Great Gamble. Cutting through the overgrown legend, Ludwig's historic trailblazing clearly defines the path of the old Chisholm Trail. Daniel T. Gresham Department of Humanities St. Mary's College Copyright © 2020 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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