The Top 10 Cattle Drives
Droving with Rawhide, Lonesome Dove and the Fort Worth herd.
Categories: Boggs Unleashed
By: Johnny D. Boggs 04/01/2008
Life on the cattle drives has always been pretty amazing—and mighty inspiring.
Just think about trail drives and all their latter-day incarnations: Cowboy’s trail boss Glenn Ford and would-be-cowboy Jack Lemmon. Cowboy Balladeers Don Edwards and Jack Thorp. Red River’s cook Walter Brennan and Rawhide’s chef extraordinaire Wishbone, played by Paul Brinegar.
I never miss a cattle drive ...
On Exchange Avenue with the Fort Worth Herd: Twice a day, Cowtown’s famous herd of longhorns takes to the bricks and are pushed past tourists by waddies dressed in period gear. The experience is not as grueling as the real drives, but it is merely a short stroll over to the White Elephant Saloon to cut the dust after the cattle are back in the pens.
On DVD with Rawhide: What would Friday nights have been like from 1959 to 1966 without Frankie Laine belting out that theme song? If this series taught us anything, it’s that cattle drovers should stay out of towns. Of course, Gil Favor never would have dreamed that Rowdy Yates would go on to become a no-name gunman, a rogue San Francisco cop and the best director working in Hollywood today. (Yes, Clint Eastwood.)
On the Road with Shanghai Pierce: You bet I’d ride for Abel Head Pierce (1834-1900). If I?had a time machine, I’d pick 1873, on a drive to Ellsworth or Wichita. His vocabulary would probably even make a writer for HBO’s Deadwood blush.
With the Dudes at Burnt Well Guest Ranch: Many guest ranches give paying customers quite the City Slickers workout. But I’m tipping my hat to this old homestead out in the middle of nowhere near Roswell, New Mexico. The drive is for real, and if I’m ever caught in a stampede, I’d rather have Kim Chesser coming to my rescue than Harry Carey, Jr.
At the Chisholm Trail Museums on U.S. 81: The Chisholm Trail wasn’t the first cattle trail, nor the longest, and it’s named after a guy who never drove cattle. You can’t push cattle up the trail today, but you can learn a whole lot about drovers on this museum circuit.
On the Western Trail with The Log of a Cowboy: Benjamin Capps won a Spur Award for The Trail to Ogallala, and Larry McMurtry won a Pulitzer for Lonesome Dove. But every Western writer would be without his or her saddle had Andy Adams not written his classic account, first published in 1903. This “Narrative of the Old Trail Days” remains so realistic, many readers think it’s nonfiction.
On the CD Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs: Most cowboys have a voice like mine and not Tony Bennett’s. Still, you can learn a lot about life on the trail by listening to songs on Marty Robbins’ 1959 album, like “Never Ride A Horse Named Dan.” (It never turns out well for horse or rider.)
At the Retro Theater with Red River: Mutiny on the Bounty meets the Chisholm Trail. This movie prompted John Ford to say of John Wayne: “I never knew the big son of a bitch could act.” In college, in 1981, I took a date to see Red River. She never spoke to me again.
Somewhere in San Antonio with Lonesome Dove: Tour the city with Gus and Call and the boys and girls on the trail from the Rio Grande to Montana. Readers still cry over the passing of Deets; viewers still wonder how Robert Duvall didn’t win the Emmy. The novel and the miniseries are truly the stuff of cattle drive dreams.
On the Real Goodnight-Loving Trail: In 1866, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving drove a herd from Young County, Texas, to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and then into Colorado. Loving would die on the trail the following year, but the Goodnight-Loving Trail endures, from Greenwood Cemetery in Weatherford, Texas, to Vic Payne’s Trail Boss sculpture in Artesia, New Mexico.
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