our history: MR. GOODNIGHT
The Making of a
Texas Icon - Part 5
By MEL W RHODES
Scout, trailblazer and rancher Charles Goodnight rose from
humble beginnings but carved out a Lasting Legacy
Charlie Goodnight
meets Oliver
Loving, scouts for
the Texas Rangers
and finds a
famous blue-eyed
captive among the
fierce Comanche
C
32
harles Goodnight met Oliver
Loving soon after he moved
lock-stock-and-barrel to
Black Springs in the Keechi Valley
of Palo Pinto County. It was a fortu-
itous meeting and the beginning of
a friendship that would go down in
history, become the stuff of legend
and lore, of books and movies. At the
time of their meeting, Loving, some
24 years Goodnight’s senior, was the
most experienced cowman on the
northwest frontier of Texas. Outliving
Loving by some 62 years, Goodnight
would always remember his “old
partner,” whose picture hung upon
Goodnight’s ranch-house wall, with
something approaching reverence.
In addition to running cattle,
Loving ran a small country store
located on the old Belknap Road
(near present-day Salesville and
Oran), the military road stretching
from Fort Worth to Fort Belknap near
the present-day town Newcastle in
Young County. He held a sizable
herd of cattle, and any cattle market-
ed by other Cross Timbers area
ranchers usually passed through his
practiced hands.
Already a veteran trail driver,
Loving typically trailed stock east
to Louisiana — to Shreveport,
Alexandria, or even New Orleans.
But in 1858, he pointed a herd
north to Illinois. Trodding the west-
ern fringe of “Manifest Destiny’s”
relentless advance across the North
American continent, Loving pushed
his herd of “big beef steers” across
dozens of streams and over hundreds
of miles.
Undeterred by hardship or
distance, two years later, in August
1860, Loving amassed and trailed a
herd to Colorado where the magnet
of the Colorado Gold Rush had
drawn thousands of hopeful trea-
sure seekers. A man named John
Dawson served as guide, and Charlie
Goodnight helped them clear the
Cross Timbers and saw them out
onto the wide open plains, almost
certainly calculating his own profits
if he were to follow suit and trail his
own herd north. He “watched them
swim the turbid Red to point straight
into the Indian Nation.” Loving deliv-
ered his stock to Denver where he
peddled them to prospectors and
miners glad of the opportunity to add
beef to their meager diets.
Getting in to Colorado proved
much easier than getting out. With
the outbreak of the Civil War, federal
authorities were reluctant to allow
the Texas cattleman to return to his
home state, which had issued an
Article of Secession and cast its lot
with the Confederacy. In fact, Texas
and three other states — Mississippi,
Georgia and South Carolina — had
gone a step further and issued addi-
tional documents referred to as
“Declarations of Causes,” outlining
reasons for their decision to secede.
Union officials feared Loving would
“Thus, above all things, the scout and
plainsman had to have a sense — an
instinct — for direction.”
– J. Evetts Haley