FINDING
THE GREAT WESTERN TRAIL
by
Susan Gann Mahoney
published by
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.
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BUY
LINKS
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Sylvia
Gann Mahoney was an educator for thirty-three years at community colleges in
Texas and New Mexico as an administrator, teacher, and rodeo team coach. She
became involved with the Great Western Trail project through her involvement in
the Rotary Club of Vernon. She now lives in Fort Worth.
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