Chisholm Trail Marker - Duncan

Two miles east of this point ran the Chisholm Trail named for Jessie Chisholm, and Oklahoma part-Cherokee indian trader.

Soon after close of Civil War, Chisholm laid out a trail with his freight wagons extending from the Arkansas river valley in Kansas to the North Canadian river valley in Oklahoma.

When Texas drovers headed their long-horned cattle toward the nearest railroad at Abilene, Kansas in 1867, this trace was the only well defined part of the route. As a result the entire trail from south Texas to northeast Kansas became known as the "Chisholm."

In the vicinity of this marker, William Duncan constructed is store where cowboys onthe trail stopped to trade and where the city of Duncan was later built.

Probably the first commercial dairy in western Oklahoma was established near here by Theodore Fitzpatrick soon after the trail was opened. He secured cows from the trail herds and sold milk to drovers and the military at newly established Fort Sill.

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Oklahoma Historical Society
incorported state trustee 1895
founded 1891


ERECTED 1967