My Town Mondays: On The Old Chisholm Trail And Red River Station

Today let's take a ride along the Old Chisholm Trail. I decided to talk about this today because this is the route my characters take in A Desperate Journey. For those who are new to this blog, A Desperate Journey is my first novel, which is being released July 22nd from Samahain Publishing.






The "Chisholm trail" was a dirt trail used in the latter 19th century to drive cattle overland from ranches in Texas to railroad in Kansas. The trail stretched from southern Texas across the Red River, and on to the railhead of the Kansas Pacific Railway in Abilene, Kansas, where the cattle would be sold and shipped eastward.

The trail is named for Jesse Chisholm who had built several trading posts in what is now western Oklahoma before the American Civil War. He died in 1868, too soon to ever drive cattle on the trail.

My novel is set in 1867, just before the big push of the cattle drives. The railroad was not quite finished and several towns along the route were brand new. It is always fascinating to me, what makes a town grow where it does and what makes a town decline, sometimes turning into a ghost town.

By 1853, Texas cattle were being driven into Missouri, where local farmers began blocking herds and turning them back because the Texas longhorns carried ticks that caused diseases in other types of cattle. Violence, vigilante groups, and cattle rustling caused further problems for the drivers. By 1859, the driving of cattle was outlawed in many Missouri jurisdictions. By the end of the Civil War, most cattle were being moved up the western branch of the Texas Road, which joined the Chisholm Trail at Red River Station in Montague County, Texas.

In 1866, cattle in Texas were worth only $4 per head, compared to over $40 per head in the North and East, because lack of market access during the American Civil War had led to increasing number of cattle in Texas.

In 1867, Joseph G. McCoy built stockyards in Abilene, Kansas. He encouraged Texas cattlemen to drive their herds to his stockyards. The stockyards shipped 35,000 head that year and became the largest stockyards west of Kansas City, Kansas.

That same year, O. W. Wheeler answered McCoy's call, and he along with partners used the Chisholm Trail to bring a herd of 2,400 steers from Texas to Abilene. This herd was the first of an estimated 5,000,000 head of Texas cattle to reach Kansas over the Chisholm Trail.

This is one of the fascinating things about that year and one of the reasons I chose 1867 as the year in which to set my novel. New routes are dangerous routes and it is the brave and adventurous souls which choose to set out on them.

Today, most historians consider the Chisholm Trail to have started at the Rio Grande or at San Antonio, Texas. From 1867 to 1871, the trail ended in Abilene.



Later, Newton, Kansas, and Wichita, Kansas, each served as the end of the trail. From 1883 to 1887, the end of the trail was Caldwell, Kansas. Ellsworth, Kansas is also considered a major influence of the trail.

In Texas, there were hundreds of feeder trails heading north to one of the main cattle trails. In the early 1840s, most cattle were driven up the Shawnee Trail. The Chisholm Trail was previously used by Indian hunting and raiding parties; it went north from Austin through Waco and Fort Worth. The trail crossed into Indian Territory (present-day west-central Oklahoma) near Red River Station (in present-day Montague County, Texas) and entered Kansas near Caldwell. Through Oklahoma, the Chisholm Trail generally followed the route of US Highway 81 through present-day towns of El Reno and Enid.

They had to cross major rivers like the Arkansas and the Red, and innumerable smaller creeks, plus the topographic challenges of canyons, badlands, and low mountain ranges. The weather was less than ideal. In addition to these natural dangers, there were rustlers, occasional conflicts with Native Americans if a trail boss failed to pay a toll of 10 cents a head to local tribes for the right to cross Indian lands (Oklahoma at that time was Indian Territory, governed from Fort Smith, Arkansas), and the natural contrariness of the half-wild Texas longhorn cattle themselves, which were prone to stampede with little provocation.

RED RIVER STATION
Red River Station is one of the towns in my novel, yet today it no longer exists. So, what happened to it? What makes a town disappear?

One of the things that makes the old Chisholm Trail so fascinating to me, is they way some towns flourished and others declined. Here is what happened with Red River Station.

Native Americans long used the fertile areas near the Red River for farming and hunting. In 1859-1860, Anglos began settling the area as the population of Native Americans dwindled. During the American Civil War, Confederate troops were stationed near Red River Station and patrolled along the southern side of the Red River, the border between Texas and Oklahoma Territory. After the Civil War, cattle drives began moving from south and central Texas to Kansas, and Red River Station was the last stop in Texas on the Chisolm Trail.

Virtually all cattle driven along the Chisolm Trail crossed at Red River Station. The town grew and citizens applied for a post office in 1873, initially naming it Salt Creek. In 1884, the post office's name changed to Red River Station. But the post office and the community would be short-lived. When the Gainesville, Henrietta, and Western Railway crossed northern Montague County, its right of way crossed south of Red River Station, through present-day Nocona and Belcherville. As towns sprung up along the new rail line and with the end to the cattle drives, Red River Station faced extinction. A tornado also struck in the late 1880s, destroying much of the community. Rather than rebuild, citizens moved south to the communities along the new rail line and Red River Station again became farm land. In 1887, the post office closed and the community ceased to exist. Today, nothing remains of the former community.

Indians prevented settlement of the area until the 1860s. During the opening months of the Civil War, Confederate troops of the Frontier Regiment were stationed here to patrol the border with Indian Territory. It served as crossing for the Chisholm Trail after the war.

In the 1870s, the population was a respectible 250-300 people and the community was served by a ferry. A post office opened under the name Salt Creek in 1883 and the following year it was changed to Red River Station. It closed in 1887. The 1880s were not kind to the community. First it was hit by a tornado, and then in 1887 it was bypassed by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad.




Nocona throve as Red River Station declined. The final nails in RRS's coffin were the establishment of another rival town (Belcherville) and the establishment of the rival Western Trail for moving cattle north. Red River Station became one of Texas' early ghost towns - having "enjoyed" a tumultuous span of barely 30 years. Only a cemetery and the name appear on detailed Montague County maps.

The importance of cattle drives began to diminish in 1887 with the arrival of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad in Texas.

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Debra Parmley's first novel, A Desperate Journey, is being released by
Samhain Publishing next Tuesday, July 22. Watch for her new website to be posted this week www.debraparmley.com and vist her blog Make-Believe Mondays for author interviews once a week. Today you can find an interview with Debra posted.

My Town Monday: Tallahassee- more than what you see

TV can be so deceiving. We tend to believe what we see sometimes forgetting that reality is more than what you see on the small screen.

Most of the time I forget I live in the capital of one of this country's most populous states. In a lot of ways, Tallahassee seems more like a small town than the nucleus of Florida politics. Until just a few years ago we didn't even have a Starbucks in town. Now I think there's like ten of them (If you count the ones they put in the 2 Target stores). But it's not a glitzy town, and it's not even very big (population is around 200,000) and while state politics is naturally a big topic around here, so is Florida State football and the weather.

While most Floridians can spell their state capital and know where Tallahassee is, I'm always sort of intrigued by what the rest of the country thinks of us. The television show Lost (of which I'm a huge fan) has mentioned Tallahassee a couple of times. The first time, I have to admit it was sort of a thrill, until I realized exactly what they said. I can't find the exact quote but it was something to the extent of Sawyer saying that Tallahassee was "nothing more than a bunch of strip malls and a good place to catch a STD." Naturally, I was outraged! Obviously, whoever wrote this had never been to my town. While yes, Tally has it's share of strip malls, it doesn't have more than the average American city and it's much better known for its beautiful canopy roads and rolling hills. And as for the STD part, well, I won't even deign to try to explain that except it sounded like a good line for TV and being a writer, I can sort of forgive it. Sort of.

The next time Lost mentioned us was in the title for an episode. "The Man from Tallahassee" . It was the episode that was supposed to give viewers insight into one of the shows most intriguing characters, John Locke. Our local paper even hyped the show. But honestly, I really didn't get why Tally was even mentioned. The show focused on Locke's paralysis and while it was good drama, I didn't see any correlation between the character and my town or even see that any part of it was filmed here.

Recently, HBO productions has made a (insert cringe here) movie about the famous 2000 Florida Presidential voting bruhaha aptly named Recount. Honestly, that time seems like one big nasty blur to me. All I can really remember was the inconvenience of not being able to drive downtown without the extra traffic of all the news vans and crews and the seemingly surreal moment when many news reporters were kicked out of their hotel rooms due to the big Florida State/Florida football game.

Hotel reservations for that game are made a year in advance and local hotels didn't want to anger fans by telling them that their rooms were now being taken up by a bunch of out-of-state reporters. So a call came out asking residents to put up reporters in their homes. Because after all, when it comes to football or politics, we all know where our priorities lie. The town took up the call, the reporters were all housed for the big game, and come Sunday, business went back to usual.

All in all, I think Tallahassee has gotten a bum rap from the media lately. It's a city that doesn't know it's a city. A place where you can raise your kids in a relatively small town atmosphere, where the big traffiic jams are over in fifteen minutes and where you're more likely to see towering oak trees and blooming azalea bushes over asphalt parking lots. It's a lot more than what you see on tv.

My Town Mondays: Theresa Remembers Sutherlin

Cooper Creek Reservoir


My husband’s 20th high school reunion is this year. Since we graduated from the same high school one year apart in the little town of Sutherlin, Oregon, population hovering somewhere under 8,000 - which is double what it was when I lived there - that means my reunion is next year.

It’s a small town you’d pass on the I-5 going north to Eugene or South toward Roseburg that had a plywood mill, but didn’t have a movie theater or a bowling alley or even a McDonald’s at the time.
We did things like take our inner tubes and float down the beautiful bluegreen water of the Umpqua River or meet each other to swim at Cooper Creek Reservoir or ate greasy, plate-sized burgers at Bozeman’s Burger Barn. For a small town there wasn’t a lot for teenagers to do. Frankly there wasn’t anything for teenagers to do—which often resulted in them doing things they shouldn’t.

But the reunion milestone wasn’t what really grabbed me by the throat, made it thick with a small grief welling up inside. What did that was a real estate listing.

Which made me start thinking about why they say you can never go home again.

Just for kicks and giggles I took a look at what was for sale on a real estate website for Sutherlin and was surprised to find that the little two-bedroom house my husband and I first lived in after we got married right out of high school was for sale.

Now most of the time one would think, yeah, you lived there, so what. But this little house was special. My mother bought it with the intention of renting it to us when we first got married (because it was across the street from my grandmother so we could keep an eye on her). She had the house completely redone, vaulting ceilings, putting in skylights, tearing out the avocado green and goldenrod shag to uncover and refinish the original wood floors beneath. We worked along side, laying tile in the washroom, painting, putting up wallpaper.

But I suppose as much as we put our stamp on that little house, someone else did too.
While the newer yellow siding looks nice, some other things are not so nice.
Gone were the dolphins my mother painted on our garage while we were on our honeymoon, covered now in dark red.
Gone are the blueberry bushes that gave tons and tons of amazing, huge blueberries that reminded my mother of my grandfather, whose favorite thing was blueberries.

Gone are the wallpapers and wood floors that made the dining room and kitchen so cute, the house looked like a little dollhouse inside. Gone are the beautiful oak cabinets, now painted a dark barn red. And dear God, they took the old, old front door and put it between the dining room and the washroom.


It made me sad, not because the place had changed so much, but because it was so different than what I fondly remember. And those changes somehow made the memories, especially those involving family that has since passed away, all the more bittersweet. Which is why we don’t go back. Because, ironically, the only constant in life is change. Nothing stays the same. And it is that brief moment in time, where the light is just right and the air smells a particular way and we hear certain things that keep forever in our memory that make a place what it was for us.

As much as I love the memories I have of that time, I have grown, and that place, that space, no longer fits who I am. Just like that little two-bedroom house would no longer fit my family.

The town still has the annual Blackberry Festival (Aug. 15-17, 2008) that started the year I graduated from high school (and replaced the not as politically correct Timber Days we went to as kids) and they now have an annual Rodeo, but I think, in some small way, I prefer to remember Sutherlin as it was, and that little house as it was. Because like those fragile petals pressed between pages, memories should be brought out now and then to be looked at and thought of fondly, but not tampered with too much.

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A national magazine writer and fiction novelist, Theresa Meyers is currently at work on both a historical romance and a paranormal young adult novel. You can find her online at her author website.

My Town Monday: Gina's Westwood Village

Blogger Travis Erwin started a weekly feature, My Town Mondays, and we at Titlewave are going to be regular contributors. We believe this format presents us with a wonderful opportunity to talk about the places we write--and that have made us writers, since we are literally from all over North America, with roots abroad.

I'm first out the gate and am sharing a Magical History Tour I took about two years ago when I re-explored my childhood--actually my pre- and teenage years--when two girlfriends (aptly called the twins because they are) came to town who I had seen in lets-not-count-how-long joined me and another dear friend ambling through an old stomping ground: Westwood Village. It was the first time we'd been together as a foursome since we were about fourteen.

Westwood Village sits just south of U.C.L.A. One thing about the place: it's always in flux. Stores opening. Stores closing. Buildings torn down. Buildings built. Nevertheless, when we agreed to meet at the Hamburger Hamlet we didn't expect to find this:


I could swear I'd just seen it in operation, but based on the condition of the paint it'd been closed for at least six months.

Undaunted, we found a new place for brunch, which wasn't a problem since there's always a ton of places to eat in Westwood. Then we had a blast walking around doing the remember whens...and trying to figure out what was where. This was the only store I saw that had been in business since I moved to that area when I was ten:

Yup. The Campus Shoe Repair was still there. Who would have thought?


I found a bit of period tile on the side of what used to be....Bullock's Westwood, but is now:


There was a time in the 80's when there were NO supermarkets in Westwood. The Safeway I'd grown up with had been converted into movie theatres, and the super expensive gourmet market, Jurgensons (who delivered to the folks in Bel Air who didn't want to do their own shopping), was gone. Here's a relic for you, the side of the building still advertises the store:


Well, since then, they put that Ralphs in at the old Bullock's Westwood and now the Safeway that became movie theatres has become a Whole Foods Market. So I guess that's progress.


And they are STILL tearing down and building. This is across from what was Bullocks. I can't completely remember what was there. Campbells Tolstad Stationers...some dress shops...


And this is the building at the corner of Westwood and Weyburn that was once a drug store (Rexal? not sure) that had the bus stop in front where I waited endlessly rain or shine, day after day for the bus that took me to Junior High and then High School--along with the twins.


This last picture is of the building I worked in when I sewed Indian bedspread dresses for a lady named Merita. EB Games is where a Wherehouse Records used to be.

Although the landmarks had changed significantly, some things remained the same. Students (now on cell phones) were everwhere. The Fox and the Bruin movie theaters were still there. And it was impossible to find cheap, convenient parking.

But after all, this is L.A.

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Gina Black's Restoration set historical romance, The Raven's Revenge, is now available in paperback from Amazon.com, and it can be ordered from your local bookseller.