Our Past Is Present October 26, 2018

October 26, 2018

            This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.

            Today’s story is about Junction City’s brief reign as a cow town and the information is taken from the collection of stories found in the book Set In Stone, which is available at our Museum.

            Even though it is true that Abilene was the terminus of the Chisholm Trail, and probably the most famous cattle trail in the West.  However, Junction City was also a cow town for a short period of time.

            This was verified in a short history of the Kansas Pacific Railroad line in the 1960s.  The Shawnee Trail known as the “Middle” or West Shawnee” road that brought the Texas cattle to Geary County was named the “Old Shawnee Trail”, because it passed through the Shawnee Indian country and was a close rival of the Chisholm route during the early days of the big trail drives. 

            The southern segments of the trail came in to use in the 1850s, however, it was not until after the Civil War that the advantages of moving the herds to Kansas became apparent.  There was a surplus of cattle in Texas during the four years of the Civil War and at the same time the farms in the eastern United States had not been worked productively either, for the same reason.  So, there was a demand for cattle, but a great distance apart.  It was the railroads that came to the rescue. 

            As the railroads pushed across the western plains at the end of the Civil War, enterprising ranchers discovered that by driving the herds to meet the rail heads in the grasslands of Kansas, the steers could be grazed to prime condition before they were shipped to markets in the East. 

            When the railroad arrived in Junction City in 1866, so did the cattle.  However, 1871 was the last year of the West Shawnee Cattle Trail as it was for the Chisholm and eastern Shawnee routes.  In that year, nearly a million cattle were driven north along these trails.  Junction City and Baxter Springs received an estimated 300,000 cattle. 

            As the railroads moved further west, settlement moved with them and the cattle trade, by force, had to move beyond the farmers and homesteaders who were plowing the land and fencing the prairies.  Slowly, the numbers on the long drive decreased as the shipping centers moved to Wichita and Dodge City.  As the trails were pushed westward mile by mile the cowboy was seen less on the Kansas plains.  After 1885, all herds had to be taken through Colorado and when the trails reached the Rocky Mountains they completely disappeared.

            And.. that’s the story about the brief reign of Junction City as a cow town and you have been reading “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.