At the close of the Civil War, when millions of Texas longhorns had no market, Illinois stockman Joseph McCoy saw that they could be driven across the prairies for rail shipment as the Union Pacific built west across Kansas. He built stockyards at Abilene and sent agents to notify Texas cattlemen. The trail he proposed ran from the Red River to Abilene, but it took its name from Jesse Chisholm, an Indian trader whose route lay between the North Canadian River and this vicinity. In 1867 the first drives began, and during the next five years more than a million head moved north past this place. In time, railroads and settlers' barbed wire closed the long trails, but the cowboys of the great drives, living in the saddle for more than a month, swimming flooded rivers, and fighting night stampedes, became heroes of an American epic.
