The Chisholm Trail: Joseph McCoy’s Great Gamble by James E. Sherow (review)

James E. Sherow’s new book about Joseph McCoy and his connection to the Chisholm Trail is packed with compelling information. Beginning with meat market conditions in New York City, the author takes his reader though the assortment of transformations that brought together man, beast, technology, and a voracious demand for beef after the American Civil War. By opening the narrative in New York City with a discussion of the vile conditions inherent in processing stock from hoof to table, the author all but compels his reader to welcome a different system located miles away from the daily lives of city dwellers. He then delivers.

As with all land and business, location is paramount, and this history of the Chisholm Trail makes that obvious. Sherow begins by joining the current trend of correctly locating the Chisholm Trail in Oklahoma rather than throughout Texas, and then refers to linked trails as part of the Chisholm system, not as the trail itself; he then avoids the debate around the origin of the name by discussing only Jesse Chisholm. This keeps his focus on McCoy’s story while also allowing him to address relevant issues.

Sherow’s use of a vast array of sources, including government documents, newspapers, journals, and secondary sources, produces varied information that should be but has not commonly been associated with the Chisholm Trail. Aside from stressing the environmental advantages of Abilene and the experience that the McCoy brothers brought to the stock industry before they embarked on their Kansas adventure, Sherow teaches the reader expected lessons about the prototype for Abilene, the stock markets and traders that would benefit from the cattle town, and the role of the railroads. What is unexpected in this story are details such as the impact of El Niño and La Niña weather patterns, the importance of hysteresis in the transformation of America’s bread basket, the price and size of a steak at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City compared with Indian rations and costs, the value of the Medicine Lodge Treaty to the livestock industry, and the impact of Wilson Bray’s refrigeration techniques. The author also supplies abundant information about Native Americans and the treatment they endured during the cattle-driving years. He examines the disruption and devastation tribes faced while businessmen did whatever they could to fill the bellies of beef eaters throughout America and beyond.

Unforeseeable and insurmountable challenges caused the demise of the Great Western Stock Yards, but not the end of McCoy. From Abilene he went to Wichita, Kansas, to help with its establishment, and then to Denison, Texas, where he applied his expertise in yet another branch of the cattle industry, the slaughterhouse. All this involvement, as Sherow demonstrates, makes it impossible to tell one history without the other. Through droughts, freezes, tick fever, health concerns, railroads, the Panic of 1873, refrigeration, and a plethora of other events, McCoy was instrumental in transforming America’s ecological and economic history.

Numerous images, maps, graphs, tables, and meteorological records add to the narrative and are outstanding. From images of important men and women to calculations of profit for cattlemen, this valuable evidence not only adds depth to this study but also serves as grist for others’ research. It also persuades historians to look beyond standard sources to tell a more inclusive and accurate history. The Chisholm Trail brings fresh eyes to the impact of the cattle era and McCoy’s role in that history. It is a welcome addition.