Illinois native Peter Preston Ackley (1858-1940) moved to Texas as a boy and went on several trail drives in the 1870s and 1880s, bringing cattle from Texas, Nebraska and Canada to Kansas railheads. Starting in the 1920s, he worked to have the Chisholm Trail recognized as a National Highway. In the 1930s he formed the Texas Longhorn Chisholm Trail Association and placed dozens of metal and granite markers along historic cattle trails in several states, Canada and Mexico. Ackley wintered in Donna and placed a trail marker here; a sign outside his house read "End of the Chisholm Trail." His efforts helped to document the era of the cattle drives in the American West.