Goodnight-Loving Trail

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Goodnight-Loving Trail

cattle trail, Texas, United States

Also known as: Goodnight Trail

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Sometimes called:: Goodnight Trail

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Goodnight-Loving Trail, historic cattle trail that originated in Young county, western Texas, U.S. The trail ran southwest to connect with the Pecos River and thence up the river valley to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and north to the railhead at Denver, Colorado. The trail was established in 1866 by cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, who followed a route of the Butterfield Overland Mail, joining their herds to that of John S. Chisum in New Mexico. The route was later extended to Cheyenne, Wyoming. The arrival of the railroads to western Texas in the early 1880s made the long cattle drives unnecessary, and the trail was to all purposes abandoned. Its role in Texas history and legend is celebrated in Larry McMurtry’s 1985 novel Lonesome Dove.

Charles Goodnight

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Charles Goodnight

American cattleman

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Born:: March 5, 1836, Macoupin County, Ill., U.S.

Died:: Dec. 12, 1929 (aged 93)

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Charles Goodnight (born March 5, 1836, Macoupin County, Ill., U.S.—died Dec. 12, 1929) was an American cattleman, who helped bring law and order to the Texas Panhandle.

Goodnight’s mother and stepfather brought him to Texas in 1846. He became a cattleman in 1856, then a Texas Ranger (1861?) and an Indian fighter, and finally a rancher and cattle driver, laying out a cattle trail from Belknap, Texas, to Fort Sumner, N.Mex., with an extension to Wyoming called the Goodnight–Loving Trail (the latter name was sometimes applied to the whole trail from Belknap).

Goodnight had ranches successively in New Mexico, Colorado, and the Panhandle of Texas, finally (from 1877) developing with a partner, John G. Adair, the great JA Ranch of nearly 1,000,000 acres containing some 100,000 cattle. He helped organize the first Panhandle stockman’s association (1880), which introduced purebred cattle, policed trails, and fought cattle thieves and outlaws. He semiretired in 1890 to a small ranch at Goodnight, Tex.

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