Published: March 20, 2009 04:40 pm      

Butner essay captured Chisholm Trail aura

Feel free to label this the back end of the Times-Review’s Chisholm Trail Trilogy.

In two slightly personalized columns, we gave you the overview history of the trail, talked about how it crossed the Brazos River at Kimball in Bosque County, and how it wound through Johnson County west of Rio Vista and in the direction of Buchanan, once the county seat. Buchanan was located not quite halfway between Cleburne and Godley. No longer does Buchanan exist.

That was the general location of the trail, but it frequently widened as far as Abilene as cattle were driven toward Kansas City. The longhorns were strategically kept as close as possible to water sources and forage.

We learned most of what we included in the first two essays on the Chisholm Trail from published sources and county historians such as Lowell Smith, Betty Bennett Mahanay and the darling of Rio Vista society, Georgia Fuqua, who never failed to make us feel good about life when she brightened our day during preparation of newspaper’s Millennium Celebration issue of 2000.

But this isn’t about Georgia, or Lowell, or Betty or the many national wordsmiths who have contributed to the trail’s history. This is more about a local fellow named John Butner, who should have been recognized long ago as one of Cleburne’s greatest journalists but never really has been.

As editor of the Times-Review after the colorful Jack Proctor — Butner signed off when publisher William Rawland sold the operation to Donrey Media Group — he wrote about numerous subjects in a free-wheeling, narrative style. Whatever Butner wrote about, he wrote well. This piece by Butner on Odie Bennett and the Chisholm Trail, originally printed in 1963, was no exception. Bennett, over whose ranch the Chisholm cows trod, died in 1968 at the age of 81.

Butner wrote:

“ ‘Can you see that road coming down the hillside slightly to the southwest?’ we were asked. We replied that we could, and Odie Bennett told us, ‘Well, that is Highway 174, west of Kimball Bridge, and that’s right on the route of the Chisholm Trail.’

“The visible stretch referred to was about five miles away.

“We had gone with Elmer Edwards to the home of Mr. Bennett seeking information about the location of the Chisholm Trail. Edwards is the chairman of the Johnson County Chapter of the Texas State Historical Society.

“A project of the chapter is marking the ‘Trail’ up which cattlemen from south and southwest Texas used to drive cattle on the way to market in Kansas before the advent of the railroads.

“A few minutes conversation with Bennett convinced us we were talking with the right man. Bennett, who is 77, was born and has lived all his life in the same house four miles west of Rio Vista on County Road 1106, about a mile south of its intersection with FM 916.

“Mr. Bennett’s grandfather moved to Johnson County from Kentucky about 1870 and had a ‘peremptory grant’ from the state on 160 acres. It was from his grandfather and father that Bennett gleaned the information about the famous cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail.

“The Bennett ranch house is located on a hill facing west, overlooking the Brazos valley. We rode with Bennett a few hundred yards south to the intersection of County Road 1106 with a road into Hill County.

“From this point, Bennett showed us the trail which led north-northeast toward Cleburne, past a then famous watering hole known as Newball Springs on Piloty Branch of the Nolan River. The trail led on northeast-ward toward Cleburne until it reached the Nolan, and the trail drivers would go up either side of the river, depending on which side furnished the best grazing for the cattle.

“From this, it can be seen that the Chisholm Trail was not a narrow trail, except at points where the terrain made it necessary, but covered an area several miles in width. Grass and water were the prime considerations, and the drives took the route where this was most available.

“Bennett then faced us to the west and pointed out that most of the drives crossed the Brazos at or near the location of Kimball Bridge. The route from there to the crossroads was not a direct line, but the drives had to bear to the south from Kimball to avoid several large canyons. From our vantage point at the crossroads, we could clearly see Rio Vista to the east and Cleburne and Keene to the northeast.

“To the north and west, the Giddens’ ranch house, the framework of ‘Cinema City,’ Bee Mountain and other famous landmarks can be seen.

“We then rode with Bennett into his pasture on the west side of the county road to the crest of a hill marked by three live oak trees. These trees are visible for many miles from throughout the area.

“Bennett said his grandfather and father had told him that the valley on the south side of this hill was used for a sheltering place for the cattle on drives when cold weather caught the herds on the trail.

“Most of the area is now covered with cedar or other trees, but Bennett said during his boyhood, he remembered well that there were very few trees and it was all pasture.

“At its intersection with the Hill County road, Johnson County Road 1106 turns back eastward toward Rio Vista.

“Bennett and his son, Hugh, donated land to enable the county to make rounded corners at the intersection, and this has left an unused triangle space in the middle of the intersection. It is Bennett’s suggestion that a marker be placed in this triangular space denoting that the Chisholm Trail passed through the point.

“There are many legends about the location of the Chisholm Trail, but when you talk with Bennett, a man who has lived on the trail route for 77 years, you have no doubt that ‘here’s a man who knows.’ ”