While there were actually many trails utilized by Comanches in Texas, “The Comanche Trail” typically refers to that system of trails used by Comanches travelling south through Texas on raids into Mexico. This trail is sometimes called the “Comanche War Trail” or “Comanche Trace”. Pekka Hämäläinen in his book The Comanche Empire says raids on the trail grew into a “veritable industry” generating a “massive northward flow of property from Mexico into Comancheria and its trade channels” to the north. The full extent of the trail stretched nearly 1,000 miles from Comancheria in the north, deep into Mexico. The Comanche Trail was in use for about a century, starting in the late 1700s.
