Home to Westcliff Park COE at Belton Lake
July 6 through July 10
Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught
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Southwest on Sam Wrayburn Tollway (SH 121), to the 121/820N TExpress Lanes. 820 North loop around Fort Worth, then Chisholm Trail Parkway south. Got off on 171 South to get to 174 South, then 6 to Valley Mills, 317 South, then let Google navigate us on Adams street and other small roads to the park.
I have no statistics for the drive down, but the trip back on I-35 E took 3:34. Not bad.
Date Temp Humid Wind
July 6 92/76 88/54 0-16
July 7 92/72 92/74 0-22
July 8 95/75 91/46 5-16
July 9 97/79 82/41 9-18
July 10 96/78 84/46 3-17
This trip is all going to be written from memory. We got there on Monday and I only starting writing down that first word on Thursday.
But that's okay. We went to see Edward, and we saw Edward. Just in the evenings, after he got off work, but that would have to do. I assume the reason I didn't add a weekend day or two to this trip was because they were all booked up. They're weren't full when we left, but close. When we arrived there were maybe three spaces empty (out of 27). On Tuesday a few people left, but by Wednesday it was nearly full again.
We took the westerly route in order to avoid I-35E around West, Waxahatchie and Waco--the three sucky W's. Road construction, narrow lanes, delays. I amused myself as we drove by wondering if we were following the Old Chisholm Trail of cattle drive days. Here's what my research found on that:
In the late 1800s, cattle were driven north through this whole area, but there wasn't a specific, well-defined "trail" and it wasn't called the "Chisholm Trail".
Quote:
Military and Interior Department maps of Indian Territory rendered between 1872 and ’87 refer to the trail north from Red River Station as the Abilene Cattle Trail, while the trail north of Fort Arbuckle and between the North Canadian and Cimarron rivers is labeled Chisholm’s Trail or Chisholm’s Cattle Trail—names that remain consistent throughout the era. Not until 1901 did maps label the trail past Monument Hill the Chisholm Trail. Someone, it seems, had extended the trail.So until I get around to reading all those books, we'll just have to assume we driving on remnants of one or more of the trails. Good enough.
The Chisholm Trail appeared sporadically in headlines between 1911 and ’38, usually amid news related to the construction of the Meridian Highway from the Canadian border to the Gulf Coast of Texas. In the mid-1920s Oklahoman P.P. Ackley, an aging former drover, announced his intention to turn the old Chisholm Trail into a highway and install commemorative markers along the route. As a result, by 1930 the length and course of the Chisholm Trail had changed to largely match those of the Meridian Highway. That year the Texas Highway Commission approved a motion to allow the Chisholm Trail Association to map a course and install markers, pending approval of the route and marker design by the commission or state engineer. After the project fell by the wayside due to disagreements and the Great Depression, Ackley began his own private project and installed an unknown number of Chisholm Trail markers from Texas north to the Canadian border. Some of his markers, which bear a distinctive Texas Longhorn insignia, still remain, while others have been replaced or removed. Given Ackley’s meandering route far beyond the parameters of the original trail, his markers remain controversial.
For clues to the original route, one must scour the record a half-century earlier. Published between 1874 and 1905, the books Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest, by Joseph G. McCoy; Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States, by Joseph Nimmo Jr.; Historical and Biographical Record of the Cattle Industry and the Cattlemen of Texas and Adjacent Territory, by James Cox; and Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States, compiled by the National Livestock Association, are invaluable resources, containing more than 400 biographical sketches of cattlemen and other information regarding the cattle business. Given the claim the Chisholm Trail name had come into common usage during the period, one would expect to find mentions of it throughout these accounts. Just the opposite is true, with scarcely a mention of the Chisholm or any other trail by name. It seems cattlemen of the era tended to name a trail according to its point of origin or destination, if they named it at all.
It appears the Chisholm Trail name only fell into common usage after 1911, well after the cattle drive era and in keeping with the name change on period maps. Whether use of the name in news stories based on old-timer’s recollections also had an effect is uncertain. While some old drovers certainly used the term to describe the trail through Texas, as many if not more disavowed the Chisholm label on the Lone Star section of the trail. Regardless, use of the term during the early 1900s is at odds with the period tradition of naming a trail for its origin or destination.
Again, the aforementioned 1872–87 military and Interior Department maps of Indian Territory refer to the trail north of Red River Station as the Abilene Cattle Trail and that between Council Grove on the North Canadian to the Cimarron as Chisholm’s Cattle Trail. But surveyors and cartographers did not extend either name to interconnecting trails during the era. Although many popular maps show the Chisholm Trail stretching unbroken from some vague point in Texas to some point in Kansas, all were produced post-1920 and are subject to opinion and changing perceptions. On no known period map does a route in Texas bear the legend Chisholm Trail or Abilene Cattle Trail, nor do any depict the Chisholm extending north of the Cimarron River. The only known period map on which a cattle trail crosses the Red at Montague County is Map of Texas Showing Routes of Transportation of Cattle, 1881, published by the Interior Department for possible inclusion in an 1880 census report. It labels that section as the Eastern, or Fort Worth, Trail.
For cattle the trail north from Texas ended in Abilene, Kan., where drovers loaded them onto Kansas Pacific Railway cars bound east. By any name it proved a profitable route.
Turns out, a surprising amount of what we “know” about the old Chisholm Trail draws on information from the post-1920 period of reminiscence. While many interesting interviews and tales originated in those years, they were rife with inconsistencies and contradictions, especially concerning the name and route of the Chisholm Trail. One old trail driver said one thing, another something completely different. A reader often gravitated toward the account favoring his own opinion, swallowing it for no other reason than simply because an old cowboy said so. Thus the debate has dragged on for decades.
Although contemporary maps and other sources might have slipped the notice of past researchers and authors, recently rediscovered documents from the era bring new and relevant information to the discussion. Researchers can now reference such documents, rather than rely on imperfect recollections transcribed decades after the actual events, a surprising number of which are unsupported by period sources. Fortunately, maps from the 1870s and ’80s are remarkably consistent with regard to the location of Chisholm’s Trail.
If a story is unsupported, by definition it is folklore. There is certainly a place for folklore and legend; everyone loves a good yarn. In the myriad stories about the Chisholm Trail shared over the intervening decades, it pops up alternately as the Texas–Kansas Trail, Eastern Trail, Texas Trail, Kansas Trail, Abilene Trail, Ellsworth Trail, Beef Trail or just the trail. But as Texas rancher and historian Tom B. Saunders IV used to say, “What is more important than the trail name are the people that actually did all the work.” The drovers who faced the dangers, took the risks and got the job done deserve more than just a good story; they deserve to have their history recorded as faithfully as possible. WW
Fort Worth author Wayne Ludwig started researching the Chisholm Trail in 2011. His recently published book The Old Chisholm Trail: From Cow Path to Tourist Stop includes citations and a bibliography for this adapted article. For further reading he suggests The Shawnee-Arbuckle Cattle Trail, 1867–1870: The Predecessor of the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas, by Gary and Margaret Kraisinger; The Trail Drivers of Texas, edited by J. Marvin Hunter; The Chisholm Trail, by Wayne Gard; and The Chisholm Trail: Joseph McCoy’s Great Gamble, by James E. Sherow. https://www.historynet.com/know-ol-chisholm-trail.htm
Our drive down was weird, to say the least. We got a later-than-necessary start. As usual on trips with boat, Mammoth takes the boat and I follow in the truck so I can keep an eye on it. I wrote down the route for Ed to put in his phone, but his maps app wasn't cooperating. He fought it for twenty minutes at least, and ended up with a route that took us on two very annoying detours. I was following blindly, and on the first detour I thought he'd forgotten something and turned back to get it. On the second one I figured it was a necessary maneuver to allow us to get from the I-820 loop onto Chisholm Trail Parkway--I'd remembered some difficulty before. But I'm not sure about that. The third detour it was my fault; I'd been in a hurry when I wrote it down, and there might have been a more straightforward way than the one Google chose for me.
NOTE: 820 does not have a simple intersection with CTP; next time, look it up and map it out carefully.
So we headed out from the church at 10:24, after hooking up the boat, and it was sprinkling on us the whole time. But it soon quit. We arrived at the park gate at 2:32.
Traffic wasn't bad at all, even in the innumerable small towns that my route took us through, and the drive was less than tedious. I ate jellybeans to amuse myself, but when we took a short potty break in a closed-down bank's parking lot, I grabbed the almost empty bag of honey mustard pretzels and supplemented my sugar rush with a salt + fat snack.
Speaking of birds--a very bold Green Heron visits the lake shore every morning and night, and he's sometimes joined by a Great Egret. It's very odd to see such birds within a stone's throw of my dogs and me.
Green Heron >>>
The edge of our patio is only six feet from the lake shore, and the space between is kept mowed. So we can walk out our door and into the lake without much trouble. The lake bottom is thick, sucky mud at our site, but on the upstream (or is it up-lake?) sites, it's gravelly. Much better for boat parking. (More on that later)
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The Sibley's Guide says this about Green Herons: Uncommon and inconspicuous. ... Forages along tree-lined streams and ponds, also seen in more open or grassy or weedy pond-edge habitats. I guess this one didn't get the word--he hangs out at the edge of the lake where there isn't a tree, grass, or weed in sight. And he's anything but inconspicuous--to a bird watcher.
Edward had Monday off. On the way in, while we were sitting at a stop light I texted him that it was going to be about 3pm when we arrived. But we ended up arriving at 2:30. So about the time we finished hookups and started to settle in, he was there. I was still walking dogs after their long (to them) confinement. I can't remember for the life of me what happened between his arrival--oh, wait. It's coming back. He arrived and almost immediately got a call about some work he needed to finish up on the computer. I'm not sure if was work related or school.
So I took the dogs on a long trek out to the boat ramp, while he did his work and Ed cooked supper. Molly was happy:
Nothing else much happened the rest of the day. Just resting up and getting lazy. We did the sofa-bed conversion for the first time ever, and found that the extra cushion that makes the middle had decayed badly in storage. The vinyl cover is flaking off in messy little chunks and it scatters all over the place. But the bed works better than you'd expect. Here's what it looks like as a table.
To make a bed, you pick up the tabletop, remove its pedestal, and put it down on the little lip along the edges of the storage cupboards that support the seats. Then you put the extra cushion in the middle and there! A nice little bed that's plenty wide enough for a human being. A rather short human being, or one who doesn't mind his feet hanging over the edge of the mattress.
Edward had to leave at 5:30 in the morning, but that didn't stop the guys from staying up late eating cookies and watching Impractical Jokers. I went to bed.
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