In 2011 a group of ranchers celebrated Kansas’ 150th Anniversary of statehood by driving a herd of 400 Texas Longhorn cattle from just south of Caldwell, Kansas, on the Kansas Oklahoma border to Ellsworth, Kansas. The cattle drive was 200 miles and lasted 21 days.

The route followed the old Cox Cattle Trail to the Kansas Pacific Railhead at Ellsworth. The trail was originally blazed in 1873. The cowboys on this drive trailed the Texas Longhorns on the very same route used by original drovers, bedded down the cattle on historic bed grounds and camped at the very same cow camps that made the cowboy famous. The herd crossed rolling prairie and ascended a "ladder of rivers.” The trail was marked by Fall Creek, Bluff Creek, and Sand Creek before crossing the Chikaskia River.