51st Journey

The 1st time I got out of Okla. I came to the Ft Worth show in 1940.  Our livestock judging team from Connors jr College at Warner, Okla. came here and we won 1st place.  I have a picture of me and Dillard Bryce on that trip.  We later had him back as the official Angus Cattle judge in the late 1970’s.

I went on to Okla A & M college from Connors and graduated in “43.  I went into the Navy fighter pilot training.  Got out of the Navy in 1946 – got Married to Madell and in 1947 moved to New London Tex as Vo Ag Teacher.  In Jan 1948 we had 9 show calves to bring to the Ft Worth Stock Show.  We left New London during the worst Ice Storm they have had in many years.  The Highways were solid ice and schools and business were all closed down.  But we had to get the calves to Cowtown for the show.  We bought chains for the trucks and my car and loaded up and headed to the show. The streets were not iced down after we got close to Dallas.  The boys got to stay in the new cattle barns that had been completed that year.  They have “dorms”  overhead in one end of the new barns that had just been completed that year.

In 1950 I brought my FFA meats judging team to Ft Worth and Armour set up classes of meats for us to practice judging.

The next time I went to the show was to the rodeo in 1972.  I went to work for Purina Mills in 1953 and ended up moving to Cowtown in 1971.  I have missed 3 rodeos since then.

I helped or set up a booth for Purina every year from 1972 until I retired in 1986.

In 1976 I started buying rodeo tickets for our feed dealers.  It grew to be 150 tickets every year.  We had the whole section U right in front of the chutes on the last Sat  Night of the annual rodeo.  We are still getting those 150 tickets and will go in a group Feb 6th 2010.

Ft Worth got its nickname “Cowtown” from the 1850’s to 1890’s Longhorn cattle drives from S Texas up thru Indian Territory to Kansas and Missouri.  The drives would come thru Ft Worth and stop over on their way North.

The Shawnee trail was the 1st started in Kansas to the railheads in St Louis in Kansas City where the packing houses were.  They would have to ferry the live cattle across the Miss and Mo rivers to be processed. The trail was expanded down thru  eastern Indian Territory in 1850, where I grew up.

The Chisholm Trail was started thru central Indian Territory when the railhead came to Abilene, Kansas in 1867.  Jesse Chisholm was a half breed Indian that worked out trails with the Indians to cross their lands.

The Western Trail was opened further west in Indian Territory when the railhead came to Dodge City and other western Kansas towns in 1868.

Millions of Longhorns were driven up these trails up until the railroad got to Ft Worth in 1876.  In 1883 the Ft Worth Stockyards were started.  Cattle were shipped on the railroads and then later 3 of the largest packing house companies, Swift, Armour and I think is was Cudahay that didn’t last long, started processing cattle, hogs and sheep in Fort Worth.

Several railroads then headed into Ft Worth and large numbers of livestock were shipped into Ft Worth for processing for many years.  The last plant closed in 1971 when we moved to Ft Worth.  We bought the Swift Managers house when they closed and he was moved to Moultree, Ga.