58 Yards West to Routes of Historic Trails
Canadian, Hemphill County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During the mass slaughter of buffaloes in the Panhandle, two trails arose to meet the needs of the hunters and their ever-hungry markets. Started about 1876, both moved vast convoys of wagons across the plains. Charles Rath-- transporting gun powder, lead, tobacco, whiskey, and food staples-- blazed a road from Dodge City to the Double Mountains. In 2 years, however, the best hunting was over and the route fell into disuse. Ed Jones and Joe Plummer forged a trail from Kansas to Fort Elliott. Their route became a freight road and finally a cattle trail. (1969)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During the frenzied slaughter of the southern buffalo herds in the mid-1870s, two supply trails rose across the Texas Panhandle to feed hide hunters and their markets. Around 1876 Charles Rath blazed a road from Dodge City hauling powder, lead, whiskey, and staples toward the Double Mountains, though the best hunting was gone within two years. A second route forged by Ed Jones and Joe Plummer from Kansas to Fort Elliott outlasted the hunt, becoming first a freight road and finally a cattle trail.
Why it matters
These trails mark the violent, rapid transition of the Panhandle from buffalo range to cattle country, a turning point in the westward expansion that displaced the Plains tribes.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the mid-1870s the Texas Panhandle was one of the last great open ranges of the Southern Plains. For generations it had been the homeland and hunting ground of the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne and other Plains peoples, and it supported vast herds of American bison. Within a few short years, all of that changed.
After the Red River War of 1874 and 1875, the U.S. Army forced the Plains tribes of the region onto reservations in Indian Territory, and the Panhandle was opened to outsiders. Hide hunters poured south from Kansas. Eastern tanneries had found ways to turn buffalo hides into industrial leather, and a single hide could be worth a few dollars. The result was one of the fastest wildlife slaughters in recorded history.
The hunters needed supplies, and the hides needed a way to market. Dodge City, Kansas, sitting on the railroad, became the hub of the trade. From it, wagon roads reached south across the plains, and the two trails remembered by this marker were among the most important of them.
People & events
Charles Rath was a Dodge City merchant who understood that the money in the buffalo trade lay as much in selling to hunters as in hunting. Starting about 1876, his wagons rolled south carrying everything a hide camp needed: gunpowder and lead for the rifles, tobacco, whiskey and plain food staples. His road ran from Dodge City all the way down to the Double Mountains far to the south.
But Rath's road had a short life. As the marker notes, within about two years the best hunting was over. The herds that had seemed endless were essentially gone, and with nothing left to hunt, there was nothing left to supply. Rath's route fell out of use almost as quickly as it had been blazed.
The second trail had a longer future. Ed Jones and Joe Plummer forged a route from Kansas to Fort Elliott, the Army post established in the eastern Panhandle in the wake of the Red River War. Because it served a permanent military post rather than a vanishing herd, their trail kept its purpose. It became a freight road, and later still a cattle trail, carrying the next chapter of Panhandle history north to market.
Its place in the American story
These two trails capture, in a single roadside marker, how fast the American West was remade. In barely a decade, the Southern Plains went from bison range and Native homeland to military frontier, then to open cattle country. The wagons that rolled past this spot were part of that transformation.
The destruction of the bison was not just an ecological catastrophe; it was a turning point for the Plains nations. The herds had been the foundation of their food, shelter and way of life, and their near-extinction made it far harder for the tribes to live independently of the reservations. Historians still debate how deliberate official policy was, but the outcome was unmistakable.
The Jones and Plummer route's evolution from freight road to cattle trail also points to what came next: the great ranching era of the Texas Panhandle. Where hunters had stripped the plains of buffalo, cattlemen soon moved in, and the trails that once carried hides and gunpowder began carrying herds instead.
If you visit
The marker tells you that the routes of these historic trails lie 58 yards to the west, so this is a place to stop, read and then look. Turn toward the west and picture long convoys of heavy freight wagons creaking across the grassland, bound for hunters' camps or a lonely Army post.
The country around Canadian is still broad and open, cut by the valley of the Canadian River. It takes little imagination to see why the plains could hold enormous herds, or why a wagon trail was the only practical highway across them. Come early or late in the day, when the low light brings out the lay of the land.
This stop fits naturally into a drive through the eastern Panhandle. Combine it with other frontier and Red River War sites in the region to follow the story from Native homeland to buffalo range to ranch country, and give yourself time to simply take in the scale of the landscape the hunters and freighters crossed.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Charles Rath
- · Ed Jones
- · Joe Plummer
Themes & tags
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