I’m Your Huckleberry, A Cattle Drive Road Trip: The Reason Why

This May, for our anniversary, we took one of our literary-inspired road trips. This one has been on our minds since our Dust Bowl Road Trip in April 2022. That trip was motivated by the two of us reading books about the Dust Bowl like Timothy Egan’s “The Worst Hard Time.”

By the time we took that trip, Ryan had begun listening to “Lonesome Dove” on Audible. From our hike at the Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico, we could look down on the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Drive Trail from the 1800s. That is the trail depicted in the book, “Lonesome Dove.” Ryan was captivated. 

He went on a cowboy/cattle trail literary journey that led him to buy “The Gunfighters” by Time-Life Books (1974), at Dickens Alley in our hometown of Loveland, Colorado. The subject has only ever been slightly interesting to me, but cowboy history came up a lot on the Dust Bowl Road Trip. 

Dust Bowl Road Trip: The Museum Issue

Plus, I listened to Ryan discuss cowboy history for many, many months. He wanted to drive to the Texas/Mexico border, to start where the cattle drives would have started, however, time and money were prohibitive so we decided on the #ImYourHuckleberry Road Trip. 

Right before we left, I listened to “Doc” by Mary Doria Russell. I’d read “The Sparrow” by Russell and knew I liked her as an author. “Doc” is her historical fiction book about Doc Holliday, and is about his time in Dodge City, Kansas. I’m currently listening to her continuation of the story in “Epitaph,” about Tombstone, Arizona, and the shootout at the OK Corral.

We decided to drive to Dodge City, where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday met, a bustling town along the Great Western Cattle Drive Trail. It still is a cattle town, with several slaughterhouses. Along with the surrounding area, it is one of the largest producers of beef in the United States. Dodge City also has the lowest unemployment rate in the state of Kansas.

We would drive from our home in Loveland, Colorado, to Dodge City, Kansas (about a six-hour drive). Spend two nights in Dodge City, and then head north, along the route of the Great Western Cattle Drive Trail, to McCook, Nebraska. Spend one night there and then head home on Hwy 34 to Loveland (four hours). And, as with the Dust Bowl Road Trip, the dog came along. 

It was an eye-opening look at how much of this country is dedicated to cattle, and a good lesson in what Mark Twain said about travel being fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. 

It was obvious on this trip that ranching and farming in Southwest Kansas (and everywhere else we drove) are a way of life for hundreds of thousands of people. Sometimes we get on our high horse, myself included, about things like “eating too much red meat” or the “perils of ranching and farming” to the environment. But the fact remains, that this is the livelihood of many of our countrymen and women. 

The answers aren’t so easy when you see this first hand—something to keep top-of-mind as one flies 30,000 feet above these places in the United States.

As I’ve written many times before, I am convinced that the heart and soul of our country live in the small towns scattered across the United States. Each one has its own story to tell and I’ve been on a journey to find the real stories while having fun. This trip was no exception. 

Come along as we explore part of the Great Western Cattle Trail, and the towns along the way.