Would-be cowboys, here’s a cattle drive just for you

It’s being billed as history on the hoof.

Kansan Jim Gray and Texan Fontella Knowlton are both ranchers gearing up for an epic Texas longhorn cattle drive next year.

The premise is to drive 400 wily and likely cantankerous Texas longhorns 800 miles – from San Antonio to Abilene, Kan. – in celebration of the 150th anniversary next year of the Chisholm Trail.

The drive, they say, promises thrills along the likes of a “Lonesome Dove” episode or a Charles Goodnight saga.

In fact, Gray, who is director of the National Drovers Hall of Fame in Ellsworth, references a line from “Lonesome Dove” character Augustus McRae.

“Well we don’t rent pigs and I figure it’s better to say it right out front because a man that does like to rent pigs is ... he’s hard to stop.”

“Just like in ‘Lonesome Dove,’ we won’t rent pigs or horses,” Gray says, and then laughs.

The trail drive, which will begin on April 1, will follow the route of the Chisholm Trail as closely as it can, Gray said. For modern Kansans, that route roughly follows what is now U.S. 81. But it will most likely be along the back roads and what private land the group is able to access through landowner permission. In some cases, the longhorns will traverse some rivers using bridges.

In other words, the exact route is still being worked out, Gray said.

Chances are the drive won’t come into downtown Wichita, Gray said. But it may come within the city limits.

In 2011, a similar but smaller drive was done to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Kansas becoming a state. That drive was 200 miles, with 200 to 400 cattle, and began from the Oklahoma border near Caldwell, Kan., and ran to Ellsworth. Gray participated in that drive and expects the drive in 2017 will also go through some smaller cowtowns. In 2011, thousands of Kansans turned out along the route – at intersections of dusty roads – to watch history in the making.

“I expect it will be bigger than that,” Gray said. “When we left Caldwell that year, virtually every intersection there were people waiting for us to come through and snapping pictures with cameras, wishing us well and waving. We think there will be more this time around.”

Trail background

In its heyday from the late 1860s through the 1880s, the Chisholm Trail served as a cattle pipeline from Texas ranches to the stockyards and railroad hubs in Abilene, Newton, Wichita and Caldwell.

It was an economic lifeline for Kansas, helping to promote the railroad and making ranching profitable. In Wichita alone, more than 230,000 head of cattle were shipped out from 1872 to 1876. The cattle were driven into downtown Wichita to the cattle pens near the railroad tracks.

Most historians see the Chisholm Trail as one of the three great byways that crossed the country. The Oregon and Santa Fe trails were east-west migrant and commercial trails, while the Chisholm was a north-south cattle trail.

The trail was developed by Joseph McCoy, an Illinois livestock trader who had the idea in 1867 to drive cattle from near San Antonio north through Fort Worth into Oklahoma through Duncan and Enid and then on to Kansas through Caldwell, Wichita, Newton and Abilene. A branch of the Chisholm also cut off at Caldwell and stretched to Ellsworth.

Trail logistics

The drive will be approached in 16 weekly segments, with the cattle being driven Mondays through Saturdays, averaging 10 to 12 miles a day, Gray said.

People who want to participate can apply. But they must bring their own horses. And they will have to wear authentic 19th-century cattle-driving-cowboy-looking clothing. To learn more, go to http://www.chisholmtrail17cattledrive.com. It will cost $1,800 a week to participate as an outrider.

There will be six to eight drovers who will be selected to go the entire route, two chuckwagons and hundreds of volunteers. Gray and Knowlton are the trail bosses. Each week, the trail drive will have a crew of no more than 14 drovers.

“We have an application process so that you can pay to ride to go,” Gray said. “You have to be a decent horseman to be able to do that.”

The two trail bosses are also consigning longhorns to go the route.

“We are getting cattle from Texas breeders and ranchers anywhere in the country,” Knowlton said. “They don’t have to be registered.”

Gray said he expects the herd will face many of the obstacles the 19th-century herds did.

“A lot of those obstacles haven’t changed,” he said. “Weather is still a major thing. We will need to deal with that.”

This story was originally published June 26, 2016 at 5:41 PM with the headline "Would-be cowboys, here’s a cattle drive just for you."