About the Great Western Cattle Trail

The Great Western Cattle Trail saw over seven million cattle and one million horses pass through Texas and Oklahoma to railheads in Kansas and Nebraska, or on to points farther north – an important factor in developing the cattle industry in Colorado, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, and Canada. It was longer in length and carried cattle for two more years than the Chisholm Trail.

The Trail began in 1874, when John Lytle created the path for his first herd to trail to Red Cloud Agency in Camp Robinson, Nebraska, to deliver to Chief Red Cloud and his food-insecure 10,000 Sioux Native Americans. General George Armstrong Custer signed for the government and paid with gold for 3,500 longhorns. Lytle, a south Texas rancher, was an astute businessman with the critical eye of a cattleman to judge the size, weight, gender, and age of longhorns to fill contracts for new open-range ranches across the northern Great Plains into the grasslands of Saskatchewan and Alberta.

For more information, see greatwesterncattletrail.com.

Info on the GWCT courtesy of Sylvia Gann Mahoney, author of Finding the Great Western Trail.