The Old MacKenzie Trail stretched toward the sunset across prairie, hill, and vale beyond the double mountains, carrying scouts, soldiers, wagon trains, settlers, grim men and haggard women westward through the Texas borderland amid hunger, thirst, anguish, fear, danger, lonely prairie graves, and conflicts with warring bands of Indians. It was first crossed by General Ranald Slidell MacKenzie of the 4th United States Cavalry in 1871 in pursuit of those bands, and though his work ended and the trail grew dim, his name and trail remained linked to the border past.