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Joseph McCoy created the first great cattle town in 1867 when he established his “cattle depot” along the Kansas Pacific Railway tracks at Abilene. The Kansas Pacific dominated the cattle trade until 1871. In that year the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad built tracks to meet the Chisholm Trail 60 miles south of Abilene.
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Caldwell, Kan., was founded in 1871, directly on the Chisholm Trail just inside the Kansas border with Indian Territory. The location was good for business, but without a railroad, Caldwell was just another place to resupply before reaching the more successful shipping towns of Abilene, Ellsworth, Newton and Wichita.
Read moreThe 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris have captured much of my attention over the past week. If you were to enter our house or office at any given time, you’d likely find the television on in the background with a competition being broadcast.
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In the later part of the 19th Century, a conflict arose at the southern Kansas border that had not been seen in any other part of the west. The seed of the dispute germinated through a land grab movement by settlers who coveted the fertile Cherokee land south of Kansas. They were especially irked by a grazing lease arrangement cattlemen had negotiated with the Cherokee Nation As early as 1878, cattlemen maintained lease arrangements with the established sovereign government of the Cherokee Nation, whereby large tracts of the reservation were grazed at a per head rate.
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Mineral spring waters were once one of the most popular treatments for human ailment. A particular cluster of springs in south central Kansas was long known to the Indians for its healing waters.
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