The Goodnight-Loving Trail

The Goodnight-Loving Trail. . In the mid 1860s, an increasingly dangerous Comanche Indian presence threatened cattle drives heading directly north out of Texas. Because of the danger and hoping for cattle markets at US Military Forts along the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving decided to take a different route. They planned to go southwest across barren, dry lands to the Pecos River and then strike 300 miles north along the Pecos to Fort Sumner, in the New Mexico Territory, and to markets further north. In June 1866, they left the Brazos River in North Central Texas with 2000 head of Longhorns. Forty days later, having lost 400 head to quicksand and a lack of water, they arrived at Fort Sumner where they were able to sell half of the remaining herd for $12,000. Their success led to the naming of the route the "Goodnight-Loving Trail." Many others followed in their footsteps, but not all were successful-many lost their lives or their herds and horses to thirst, alkali poisoning, quicksand, drowning, floods, stampedes or Indian raids. The trail later had competition from the railroads (1894 into Artesia), and ceased altogether with barbed wire fencing in the very early 1900s., "Take Me Back to Texas" , Lonesome Dove. Although Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry does not contend that his 1985 best-selling book is an actual account of historical events, the story offers an accurate portrayal of life on a nineteenth-century cattle drive in the southwest. In fact, many similarities exist between the Lonesome Dove main characters Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call and those real-life history makers Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight, who forged the Goodnight-Loving Trail that passed through this area., The fictional fate of Augustus McCrae was that, in real life, of Oliver Loving. As history states in 1867, on the third Goodnight-Loving cattle drive, Loving and another cowboy were ahead of the herd when they were ambushed by a group of Comanche Indians about 40 miles south of here, near the present day town of Loving. Oliver Loving was wounded and sent his partner to retrieve Goodnight, who was about seventy miles further down the Pecos with the herd. Goodnight arrived days later at the ambush site with no sign of Loving. Goodnight then rode up the Pecos to Ft. Sumner, where he was pleased to find Loving, who had escaped the ambush. Despite desperate efforts to save his life, Loving died due to complications related to surgery. Honoring Loving's last request, Goodnight took his partner's body back to Texas for burial.