text: In 1866, cattle in Texas were worth $4 per head, compared to over $40 per head in the North and East. Lack of market access during the Civil War had produced an overstock 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.  O. W. Wheeler answered McCoy's call, and he along with partners used the Chisholm Trail to bring a herd of 2,400 head 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. McCoy's stockyards shipped 35,000 head in 1867 and became the largest stockyards west of Kansas City, Kansas.
  The construction of the Union Pacific Railway through Nebraska eventually offered a cattle drive destination that was an attractive alternative to the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Between 1876 and 1884 some drives went along the Great Western Cattle Trail instead of the Chisholm Trail.
  Route
  In Texas, hundreds of feeder trails headed 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; the trail crossed into Indian Territory (present-day west-central Oklahoma) near Red River Station and entered Kansas near Caldwell. Through Oklahoma, the route of U.S. Highway 81 follows the Chisholm Trail through present-day towns of El Reno, Duncan, Chickasha, and Enid.
  Historians consider the Chisholm Trail to have started either at Donna or San Antonio. From 1867 to 1871, the trail ended in Abilene, Kansas, but as railroads incrementally built southward, the end of the trail moved to other cities.  The end of the trail moved to Newton and soon afterward to Wichita. From 1883 to 1887, the end of the trail was at Caldwell.