Queen of the Texas Trail

[janeagwynne]

In South Texas, near Cotulla, south of the Nueces River near the old Fort Ewell was a ranch called La Mota. A 43,000-acre Ranch which was managed by a woman after her husband died at the ripe age of 39. I am named after Amanda Nite Burks.

Amanda had already lost her only two children from typhoid and diphtheria, in Shawney Prairie (SE of Lufkin) prior to moving south to raise Sheep and then Cattle in the Texas Valley.  After her husband's death from tuberculosis in 1877, Amanda continued driving up the Chisolm trail to Kansas with her ranch hands and a few other family members. I am not sure when the trail drives ended but it was the induction of barbed wire fences across Texas.

Amanda continued to trade cattle until the 1920's. In the 1925 she was crowned the Queen of the Texas Trail Riders and inducted into the Texas Trail of Fame in 2000.  Amanda was born in 1841 in the Republic of Texas and lived 92 years.

"Today’s Texas Longhorn is a direct descendent of the free-roaming cattle that could be found on Texas planes between 1700 and 1865.  From 1865 to 1885 around 10 million Longhorns were driven from the state of Texas to the state of Kansas to be put onto railcars and carried to slaughterhouses in Chicago.

Barbed wire made it possible for farmers and ranchers to fence off and claim land for themselves and keep their cattle from roaming and being stolen. Fencing also made it possible to manage grazing land and prevent overgrazing. " The trail drives ended.