Jesse was an Oklahoman in the early part of the 19th Century who gets credit for breaking the trail from Texas to the railhead in Kansas. Remarkably, he never actually drove cattle on the trail. The first trail started around the present location of Oklahoma city, and ended in Abilene. There's a great write-up on Jesse here on Wiki.

Eventually, historians mark the beginning of the trail as down by the Rio Grande, or San Antonio, but of course, many feeders merged into the trail, as it moved north to the railhead, which was moving west thru along the current route of I-70. There's a Kansas map here on my website. .

The Chisholm trail was used for about 20 years, and furnished a lot of material for Western Movies, most notably Red River -- starring John Wayne as Tom Dunson... the first man to drive the trail. (fiction... fiction) The movie is great...one of the best. The river crossings were filmed right here in Cochise County, where they built three dams on the San Pedro, and broke them during the filming to keep the river high. My high school buddy Gene Nunally told me they rounded up every steer in the area for the film Their biggest problem was keeping the few longhorns right in front of the camera because most of them were shorthorns!

You can buy Red River here! The song is by Charlie Daniels, from his album By the Light of the Moon: Campfire Songs & Cowboy Tunes

Jesse Chisholm

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