Download Free Guide Map Of The Great Texas Cattle Trail From Red River Crossing To The Kansas Pacific Railway 1874 Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Guide Map Of The Great Texas Cattle Trail From Red River Crossing To The Kansas Pacific Railway 1874 and write the review.

The mountain-top volleys from any scholarly set-to among social historians concerning the elusive roots of American democracy do reach our ears from time to time, and this rather formidable cannonade just may strike off some sparks, although it is hardly leisure reading. The author's efforts seem to have been spurred on by academics past and present (including historians Elkins and McKitrick) who have examined frontier communities and others more current and have concluded that democracy is a process of peaceful decision-making in a self-contained, homogeneous community. Dr. Dykstra, taking umbrage, has moved through the years 1867-1885 in five ""frankly ambitious frontier settlements,"" and has plowed up enough evidence in the social, political, economic, etc. areas to state with confidence that instead of the traditional view of conflict hindering progress, one should brace conflict with cooperation on an equal basis. Conflict, Dykstra insists was ""normal . . . inevitable . . . a format for community decision . . . change."" A shift in focus that just might--in an undoubtedly popular interpretation--cheer our chaotic days. A thorny, difficult book but worthy.
One hundred fifty years ago the McCoy brothers of Springfield, Illinois, bet their fortunes on Abilene, Kansas, then just a slapdash way station. Instead of an endless horizon of prairie grasses, they saw a bustling outlet for hundreds of thousands of Texas Longhorns coming up the Chisholm Trail—and the youngest brother, Joseph, saw how a middleman could become wealthy in the process. This is the story of how that gamble paid off, transforming the cattle trade and, with it, the American landscape and diet. The Chisholm Trail follows McCoy’s vision and the effects of the Chisholm Trail from post–Civil War Texas and Kansas to the multimillion-dollar beef industry that remade the Great Plains, the American diet, and the national and international beef trade. At every step, both nature and humanity put roadblocks in McCoy’s way. Texas cattle fever had dampened the appetite for longhorns, while prairie fires, thunderstorms, blizzards, droughts, and floods roiled the land. Unscrupulous railroad managers, stiff competition from other brokers, Indians who resented the usurping of their grasslands, and farmers who preferred growing wheat to raising cattle all threatened to impede the McCoys’ vision for the trail. As author James E. Sherow shows, by confronting these obstacles, McCoy put his own stamp upon the land, and on eating habits as far away as New York City and London. Joseph McCoy’s enterprise forged links between cattlemen, entrepreneurs, and restaurateurs; between ecology, disease, and technology; and between local, national, and international markets. Tracing these connections, The Chisholm Trail shows in vivid terms how a gamble made in the face of uncontrollable natural factors indelibly changed the environment, reshaped the Kansas prairie into the nation’s stockyard, and transformed Plains Indian hunting grounds into the hub of a domestic farm culture.
The Old Chisholm Trail charts the evolution of the major Texas cattle trails, explores the rise of the Chisholm Trail in legend and lore, and analyzes the role of cattle trail tourism long after the end of the trail driving era itself. The result of years of original and innovative research—often using documents and sources unavailable to previous generations of historians—Wayne Ludwig’s groundbreaking study offers a new and nuanced look at an important but short-lived era in the history of the American West. Controversy over the name and route of the Chisholm Trail has persisted since before the dust had even settled on the old cattle trails. But the popularity of late nineteenth-century Wild West shows, dime novels, and twentieth-century radio, movie, and television western drama propelled the already bygone era of the cattle trail into myth—and a lucrative one at that. Ludwig correlates the rise of automobile tourism with an explosion of interest in the Chisholm Trail. Community leaders were keenly aware of the potential economic impact if tourists were induced to visit their town rather than another, and the Chisholm Trail was often just the hook needed. Numerous “historical” markers were erected on little more than hearsay or boosterish memory, and as a result, the true history of the Chisholm Trail has been overshadowed. The Old Chisholm Trail is the first comprehensive examination of the Chisholm Trail since Wayne Gard’s 1954 classic study, The Chisholm Trail, and makes an important—and modern—contribution to the history of the American West. Winner, 2018 Elmer Kelton Book of the Year, sponsored by the Academy of Western Artists​