Luther David Bushong was born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. A child witness to the American Civil War, 1861-1865; soon after he set out for adventure at the age of 16. Short stints with fishermen on the Chesapeake Bay, and later with railroad crews in Ohio he saved enough money to board a steamboat in Bellaire, OH on his way down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, LA. Staying there for 5 days he then boarded a steam ship across the Gulf of Mexico arriving at Galveston, TX in December, 1868.

Finding work with railroad crews once again in Texas he saved his money, bought a horse and saddle, then made his way inland where he was hired on by cattlemen in Central Texas pushing up the Old Chisholm Trail to the rail heads in Abilene, KS (600 miles). On this professional trail drive he soon became a real cowboy, on the trail, the first of three long cattle drives across the American West.

With only a few days to rest, his 2nd and even longer drive was across the Overland Cattle Trail and Old Oregon Trail with legendary trail boss Col. John Jacob Meyers (Memorial # 31453056) and 3,000 Texas Cattle west onto the Snake River Plain in the Idaho Territory (1200 miles). Historically, this was the 2nd long-haul drive of Texas Cattle into the Idaho Territory (Raft River Valley, 1869); the 1st arriving in the Fall 1868. He was now 17 years of age.

From there began his final drive with the same Company (1,000 cattle) west all the way to the CA/NV border and Carson River Valley (500 miles). Rested there, he soon boarded the newly completed rail line from Reno, NV into San Francisco, CA. Within the span of two years Luther David Bushong had traversed our Nation from the Chesapeake Bay of the Atlantic Ocean, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and west to San Francisco Bay of the Pacific Ocean.

After boarding a steamship down to San Pedro, CA (modern day Los Angeles, CA) he then made his way east across the Southwest where he was one of the many young founding settlers along with Phillip Darrell Duppa (Memorial #13953712) that named, and helped survey the first town plan for Phoenix, AZ in the fall of 1870. There he lived and worked through early 1873. With Texas on his mind, he joined a wagon team heading back east across the Salt River Valley. The journey arrived in San Saba, TX where he soon met and later married Martha Jane CRAWFORD Bushong on 21 Oct 1873.

Both her father and grandfather had migrated together with their families from Tennessee to Texas where together they purchased lands just east of San Saba, TX in 1855. Here her family established a respected and successful stock operation; the Crawford Cattle Ranch where L.D. and Martha would first begin to raise their own family. By 1880, their young family migrated south to Kerr County and it is here in the Texas Hill Country Region they would live out their lives with five children.

In all, 90 years of working hard and living free that even included a long awaited return home to his boyhood state of Virginia not long after his wife Martha was laid to rest. He visited many of the historic sites in the east and our nations capital in Washington. After many, it was this final adventure he treasured for the rest of his life.