Lakes Trail Region

(940) 872-1173

Website

At Chisholm Trail Memorial Park the life-sized silhouettes of longhorns and cowboys let you know there’s something cowboy about Bowie. Clouds of dust passed this way during the late 1800s as drovers herded millions of longhorns along the Chisholm Trail to Kansas railhead markets. That trail-driving heritage rekindles each June during Jim Bowie Days, which boasts one of the largest amateur rodeos in Texas. Trail drives waned by the 1880s when the Fort Worth and Denver Railway built through the area. Businesses cropped up in canvas tents at the rail construction camp, and the town of Bowie was born. By the 1890s ranchers began showing up in downtown to trade horses and mules. Business draws a crowd, so peddlers and medicine show hawkers came as well. More than a century later, Bowie’s Second Monday Trade Days remains one of the largest and oldest flea markets in North Texas. The historic downtown comes alive each fall during the annual Chicken and Bread Days Heritage Festival. The lively event is named after famed newspaperman Amon G. Carter who, as a boy, sold chicken and biscuits at Bowie’s train depots in the early 1900s.