OklahomaHorses Magazine March 2022

March/April 2022 • OklahomaHorses 15 STILLWATER 502 E. 6th Ave Stillwater, OK 74074 405-372-2766 DAVIS 205 South A St Davis, OK 73030 580-369-2354 CLAREMORE 721 W. 6th St. Claremore, OK 74017 918-341-0933 PERRY 205 Gene Taylor Perry, OK 73077 580-336-2168 • Flowers, Vegetables & Gardening Supplies • Oklahoma owned and operated since 1891 • Over 100 in-state dealers plus TX and AR • Livestock handling equipment, animal health, home and garden, livestock feed, clothing Ranchers in the Texas Hill Country west of San Antonio and Austin moved cattle north across the Llano and Brazos Rivers before crossing the Red River near Doan’s Crossing. In 1881, Corwin Doan noted that more than 300,000 head of cattle had passed his trading post head- ed north. Once in Indian Territory, the most dangerous part of the trail led the herds across the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservations. Although almost all meetings with the Indians ended with the trade of a few cattle to the Indians to help supple- ment government rations, military escorts frequently patrolled the trail in the 1880s. From present northwestern Oklahoma, trails cut west toward Colorado and continued north past Dodge City, Kansas, eventually reaching Canada. The Western Trail continued to be a significant trade route for beef well into the 1890s. Rancher John Blocker’s drive to South Dakota in 1894 is the last recorded drive up the trail, which had witnessed several million head of cattle migrating north. Life on the cattle trails had some dra- matic moments, as evidenced by the writ- ings of the cowboys who traveled north: “We arrived within eight or ten miles of Dodge City, Kansas, a beautiful city…. That night we had a terrible storm. Talk about thunder and light- ning! About 10 o’clock at night we were greeted with a terribly loud clap of thunder and a flash of lightning killed one of our lead steers just behind me. That started the ball rolling. Between the rumbling, roaring and rat- tling of hoofs, horns, thunder, and lightning, it made an old cow-puncher long for headquar- ters or to be in his line camp in some dugout on the banks of some little stream.” — S. H. Woods