Does this sound like a scene out of any one of the hundreds
of Western movies we have all seen? Now mix in a few Plains Indians, a fur
trapper camp, food booths and Western Arts and Crafts for sale. What you get is
only a sample of the sights spectators are treated to the first full weekend of
June each year as Yukon, Oklahoma, observes its annual Chisholm Trail Festival.Geographically, Yukon sits directly astride the historic cattle trail first blazed by the Indian trader, Jesse Chisholm, as a wagon road. The scope of Yukon's Chisholm Trail Festival is larger than its size would indicate, and is probably one of a kind in the state of Oklahoma. This one celebrates the history of the area throughout the entire nineteenth century with a special emphasis on the cattle drive period of 1867-1890.
In the Living History encampment area, the "Walk to The Past" features authentic camps of people who actually crossed the area on their way into history. Visitors get to see and talk to everyone from aboriginal plains Indians scraping hides and napping flint to homesteaders looking for their own piece of the American Dream.
Other folk represented are fur trappers and traders, buffalo
hunters, cattle drovers, Civil War soldiers, U.S. Cavalry, outlaw gangs, and
U.S. Marshals.Visitors will wet their whistle on soft drinks in the frontier saloon as gunfights break out in the town streets, witness a Civil War battle re-enactment, watch blacksmiths and wheelwrights practice their almost-lost arts, and hear storytellers spin yarns about the history and the legend of the Old Chisholm Trail.