Finding the Great Western Trail (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest)
Description
The Great Western Trail (GWT) is a nineteenth-century cattle trail that originated in northern Mexico, ran west parallel to the Chisholm Trail, traversed the United States for some two thousand miles, and terminated after crossing the Canadian border. Yet through time, misinformation, and the perpetuation of error, the historic path of this once-crucial cattle trail has been lost. Finding the Great Western Trail documents the first multi-community effort made to recover evidence and verify the route of the Great Western Trail.
The GWT had long been celebrated in two neighboring communities: Vernon, Texas, and Altus, Oklahoma. Separated by the Red River, a natural border that cattle trail drovers forded with their herds, both Vernon and Altus maintained a living trail history with exhibits at local museums, annual trail-related events, ongoing narratives from local descendants of drovers, and historical monuments and structures. So when Western Trail Historical Society members in Altus challenged the Vernon Rotary Club to mark the trail across Texas every six miles, the effort soon spread along the trail in part through Rotary networks from Mexico, across nine US states, and into Saskatchewan, Canada.
This book is the story of finding and marking the trail, and it stands as a record of each community’s efforts to uncover their own GWT history. What began as local bravado transformed into a grass-roots project that, one hopes, will bring the previously obscured history of the Great Western Trail to light.
Praise for Finding the Great Western Trail (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest)
Sylvia Mahoney brilliantly documents how hundreds of grassroots volunteers rescued the Great Western Trail from obscurity. Her notes and records about the project are second-to-none, and this book is destined to become the premier document for the preservation of this part of our country’s western expansion and development.
--James Aneff, past governor, Rotary International District 5790, Abilene, Texas
An entertaining blend of the old and the new, Finding the Great Western Trail is at once a story about the early cattle drives and a modern-day journey to mark the trail, and a “how-to” guide to completing a major service project.
--Jeff Bearden, historian and co-chair of Marking the Great Western Trail project, Vernon, Texas
Impressive and highly significant, Finding the Great Western Trail seamlessly brings together such topics as cattle and cowboys, drovers and cattle drives. Broad in its coverage and engaging in its presentation, Mahoney recounts with passion and clarity the long-standing efforts of local Rotary International groups, with the help of public officials, to mark this famous cattle-moving route from Mexico northward into Canada.
—Paul H. Carlson, professor emeritus of history, Texas Tech University
Sylvia Mahoney's book, a true labor of love, is amazing and so well done. The story is an important one, of strong, brave, and innovative individuals who stuck to their guns in their beliefs and principles to build a better future.
--Ted Paup, Great Western Trail rancher, businessman, and Rotarian
