And another general reference re the Shawnee Trail and Preston:
<excerpt>
The northward drives continued, those to Missouri becoming larger in 1849 and 1850. "Several droves of cattle have passed through this place enroute to Missouri," reported the Dallas Herald in June 1850. "They are brought mostly from the upper Brazos and are carried to Missouri to be sold for beef or to furnish teams for California emigrants."
This trailing to northern markets, which mounted steadily during the 1850s, generally followed a route that Indians, traders and emigrants had already well established. Red Men had used it for decades. They had ridden over it in hunting buffaloes and in raiding the early white settlements in central Texas to steal horses and to capture prisoners for ransom. Many pioneer settlers, coming down through the Indian Territory in Conestoga wagons, had entered Texas by this trail. They called it the Texas Road. In the early spring of 1845, more than a thousand wagons were said to have crossed the Red River into Texas in six weeks.
This route, which some drovers came to call the Shawnee Trail, led from the ranges of southern and southwestern Texas past Austin, Waco and Dallas. On to the north it kept to the high prairies, skirting the post oak timbers. The herds swam the Red River at Rock Bluff Crossing, near Preston, in Grayson County. This crossing was popular because a natural rock formation served as a chute into the water and because a gentle slope in the opposite side made it easy for the cattle to come out.
Texas drovers who used this route in the 1850's called it the cattle trail, the Kansas Trail, or merely the trail. Just when or how some began to call it the Shawnee Trail is uncertain. That name appeared in print at least as early as 1874 and presumably was used much earlier. The name could have been suggested by an Indian village, called Shawneetown, on the Texas bank of the Red River just below the trail crossing. Or by the Shawnee Hills, which the routed skirted on their eastern side before crossing the Canadian River. <end>
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Wayne Gard, The Chisholm Trail. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press (1954)
Biography: GARD, SANFORD WAYNE (1899–1986). Wayne Gard, author of Texana and Southwestern history, was born on June 21, 1899, in Brocton, Illinois. His childhood was spent in Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois. His studies at Illinois College were interrupted by Army service in World War I. In 1933 he joined the Dallas Morning News as a copy editor. He was quickly moved to editorial writing, where he remained until his retirement in 1963. During this time his fascination with the history of Texas and the Southwest grew. His first book in this genre was Sam Bass (1936). It was followed by seven others, including Frontier Justice (1949), Chisholm Trail (1954), The Great Buffalo Hunt (1959), Rawhide Texas (1965), and Reminiscences of Range Life (1970). Rawhide Texas won for him the Summerfield G. Roberts Award from the Sons of the Republic of Texas in 1966. He also wrote numerous articles and reviews for over forty publications, including American Heritage, Reader's Digest, American Mercury, Cattleman, and Vanity Fair. The Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West said of him that his "experience as a news writer taught him to spot the significant. As a result, he was always economical in his use of words, and his writings reflect strength and vitality." Gard was president of the Texas State Historical Association and the Dallas chapter Organization of Professional Journalists. He was a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Texas Folklore Society, Western History Association, Press Club of Dallas, and the First Unitarian Church. He was also a honorary member of the Sons of the Republic of Texas. He died of pneumonia on September 24, 1986, in Dallas.
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Handbook of Texas
:
<excerpt>
The northward drives continued, those to Missouri becoming larger in 1849 and 1850. "Several droves of cattle have passed through this place enroute to Missouri," reported the Dallas Herald in June 1850. "They are brought mostly from the upper Brazos and are carried to Missouri to be sold for beef or to furnish teams for California emigrants."
This trailing to northern markets, which mounted steadily during the 1850s, generally followed a route that Indians, traders and emigrants had already well established. Red Men had used it for decades. They had ridden over it in hunting buffaloes and in raiding the early white settlements in central Texas to steal horses and to capture prisoners for ransom. Many pioneer settlers, coming down through the Indian Territory in Conestoga wagons, had entered Texas by this trail. They called it the Texas Road. In the early spring of 1845, more than a thousand wagons were said to have crossed the Red River into Texas in six weeks.
This route, which some drovers came to call the Shawnee Trail, led from the ranges of southern and southwestern Texas past Austin, Waco and Dallas. On to the north it kept to the high prairies, skirting the post oak timbers. The herds swam the Red River at Rock Bluff Crossing, near Preston, in Grayson County. This crossing was popular because a natural rock formation served as a chute into the water and because a gentle slope in the opposite side made it easy for the cattle to come out.
Texas drovers who used this route in the 1850's called it the cattle trail, the Kansas Trail, or merely the trail. Just when or how some began to call it the Shawnee Trail is uncertain. That name appeared in print at least as early as 1874 and presumably was used much earlier. The name could have been suggested by an Indian village, called Shawneetown, on the Texas bank of the Red River just below the trail crossing. Or by the Shawnee Hills, which the routed skirted on their eastern side before crossing the Canadian River. <end>
------------------------------
Wayne Gard, The Chisholm Trail. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press (1954)
Biography: GARD, SANFORD WAYNE (1899–1986). Wayne Gard, author of Texana and Southwestern history, was born on June 21, 1899, in Brocton, Illinois. His childhood was spent in Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois. His studies at Illinois College were interrupted by Army service in World War I. In 1933 he joined the Dallas Morning News as a copy editor. He was quickly moved to editorial writing, where he remained until his retirement in 1963. During this time his fascination with the history of Texas and the Southwest grew. His first book in this genre was Sam Bass (1936). It was followed by seven others, including Frontier Justice (1949), Chisholm Trail (1954), The Great Buffalo Hunt (1959), Rawhide Texas (1965), and Reminiscences of Range Life (1970). Rawhide Texas won for him the Summerfield G. Roberts Award from the Sons of the Republic of Texas in 1966. He also wrote numerous articles and reviews for over forty publications, including American Heritage, Reader's Digest, American Mercury, Cattleman, and Vanity Fair. The Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West said of him that his "experience as a news writer taught him to spot the significant. As a result, he was always economical in his use of words, and his writings reflect strength and vitality." Gard was president of the Texas State Historical Association and the Dallas chapter Organization of Professional Journalists. He was a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Texas Folklore Society, Western History Association, Press Club of Dallas, and the First Unitarian Church. He was also a honorary member of the Sons of the Republic of Texas. He died of pneumonia on September 24, 1986, in Dallas.
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Handbook of Texas
: