Great Western Cattle Trail

The Great Western Cattle Trail is the name used today for a cattle trail established during the late 19th century for moving beef stock and horses to markets in eastern and northern states. It is also known as the Western Trail, Fort Griffin Trail, Dodge City Trail, Northern Trail and Texas Trail. It ran west of and roughly parallel to the better known Chisholm Trail into Kansas, reaching an additional major railhead there for shipping beef to Chicago, or longhorns and horses continuing on further north by trail to stock open-range ranches in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, and two provinces in Canada. A full-length drive from the trailhead south of Bandera, Texas took almost one hundred days to reach its destination in Kansas.

Both trails reached the Atchison & Topeka ad Kansas Pacific railways, which terminated in St. Louis; the Western Trail continued on to the later-built Union Pacific, which offered a direct corridor to Chicago, which helped it grow into America's greatest meat processor.

Although rail lines were built in Texas, high freight prices for stock continued to make it more profitable to trail cattle north to the major east-west lines in Kansas.