The Williamson Museum's Up the Chisholm Trail Cattle Drive, Chuckwagon Cook-off and Ranch Rodeo September 11, 2009

Watch chuckwagon teams compete and see an authentic longhorn cattle drive in San Gabriel Park on Friday and Saturday, September 11 and 12, to recognize Georgetown’s location on the historic Chisholm Trail, as well as Williamson County’s rich cattle driving and raising heritage. The event takes place at San Gabriel Park in Georgetown with entertainment for visitors of all ages including live cowboy music, food, western art show, western demonstrators, chuckwagons, kids’ chuckwagon cook-off, historical trail drive re-enactors and a ranch rodeo. A kids’ chuckwagon cooking contest and live cowboy music will kick off the event in San Gabriel Park on Friday night from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The event follows in the tradition started by trail drivers in Williamson County in the 1860s. The father of the Longhorn Chisholm Trail, Peter Preston Ackley, coined the phrase “Up the Chisholm Trail.” Ackley was a famous trail driver who made his first trip up the trail to Kansas as a teenager in 1878. Ackley spearheaded the trail marking movement in the 1930s in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, with the goal of placing a “Going Up the Texas Chisholm Trail” marker in every county that the trail passed through. One of these historically significant trail markers still stands at the southwest corner of the courthouse.

Texas cowboys drove more than five million cattle and a million mustangs up the Chisholm Trail from 1867 to 1885, making it the largest migration of livestock in world history. Some of the earliest cattle drives originated in Williamson County and this heritage continues today with modern-day Williamson County cattle raisers pioneering the “New Chisholm Trail,” the I-35 corridor.

Official Website: http://upthechisholmtrail.org