"Absolutely the best source there is on the cattle trail." Walter Prescott Webb J. Marvin Hunter's The Trail Drivers of Texas is a brilliant collection of first hand accounts of men and women who lived on the trail and range in the Old West. In total there are over two hundred different accounts from Texans in the nineteenth century. From the humorous to the deadly, the thrilling to the everyday, each of these stories are remarkably individual, depicting a Texas before the advent of the railroad. Hunter explained that "These pages sparkle with the lustre of deeds well done by a passing generation, and it is our purpose to keep bright that lustre, that it may not pale with the fleeting years." Many of the major events and figures of Texan history are covered within this monumental work, from members of the Texas Rangers to old cowboys, from the gun slinging towns to travelling the Chisholm Trail. "For 60 years, The Trail Drivers of Texas has been considered the most monumental single source on the old-time Texas trail drives north to Kansas and beyond ... Because of its vast volume of raw material, expressed in the words of those who lived the life and rode the long miles, students of cattle industry history regard it with high respect, even awe." Elmer Kelton, Dallas Morning News J. Marvin Hunter was an author, historian, journalist, and printer who founded the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera, Texas. His books include Pioneer History of Bandera County: Seventy-five Years of Intrepid History, The Bloody Trail in Texas, Old Camp Verde, the Home of the Camels, a reference to Jefferson Davis's 1850s camel experiment in the Southwest, Cooking Recipes of the Pioneers, and Peregrinations of a Pioneer Printer. He edited and compiled The Trail Drivers of Texas which was published in 1920. He died in 1957.

Bonded Leather binding

How 35,000 restless cowboys drove 20 million cattle out of Central Texas into one of the greatest adventures in American history.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This is a new release of the original 1924 edition.

REVIEWS "The Gruene Cowboy shines a new spotlight on the fantastic stories captured in the original Trail Drivers of Texas." -Rebecca Huffstutler Norton, Executive Director, Frontier Times Museum, Bandera, Texas "Absolutely the best source there is on the cattle trail." -Walter Prescott Webb, historian, author and president of the Texas State Historical Association "The most monumental single source on the old-time Texas trail drives north to Kansas and beyond." -Elmer Kelton, Dallas Morning News "... the essential starting point for any study of Texas trail-driving days." -Basic Texas Books IN 1915, GEORGE W. SAUNDERS, a self-described "old-time" cowboy, organized and founded the now legendary Old Time Trail Drivers' Association in San Antonio, Texas. Worried that other old-timers would soon die, taking their colorful accounts of the Wild West with them to their graves, Saunders urged his group to gather the accounts of aging Texans who as young men and women "went up the trail with cattle or horses between 1865 and 1896." The result was the 1923 masterpiece, The Trail Drivers of Texas, from which The Gruene Cowboy is excerpted. Wrote Saunders: "It is our purpose to write a history dealing strictly with trail and ranch life and the early cattle industry. This book will consist of letters written by trail drivers only, giving the minutest details of their experiences of bygone days at home and on the trail, and will contain facts and be full of thrills. Such a book has never been written; all the books published on this subject have been by some author who spent a few months on some ranch, then attempted to write a book, understanding very little about stock or the stock business, and consequently having them pulling off stunts that have never been pulled off anywhere else but in the fertile imagination of some fiction writer." This new edition, dubbed The Gruene Cowboy -- in honor of trail rider H.D. Gruene, whose family founded the now famed Central Texas tourist town and music mecca of Gruene -- contains many of the Saunders' tales but has been edited to include only the most-colorful stories and, and reworked archaic spellings and old-school styles to make it easier for modern readers. Along the trail, novices like Gruene encountered hostile Indians, cattle stampedes, gunfights, Billy the Kid, outlaws, hazardous river crossings, Quanah Parker, bars and street fights in Dodge City, herds of buffalo, extreme weather and unexpected early death in many forms. Saddle up with the men and women who blazed the cattle trails north to Dodge City, and beyond!