Two Rode Together
True West|April 2023
OLIVER LOVING AND CHARLES GOODNIGHT MADE HISTORY IN 1866, AND 120 YEARS LATER LARRY MCMURTRY MADE THEM LEGENDS.
JOHNNY D. BOGGS
Two Rode Together

The Goodnight-Loving Trail has inspired songwriters and novelists. Cattleman Charles Goodnight became one of the iconic figures of Texas and the West and helped save the American bison from extinction. Oliver Loving, whose death in 1867 led to one of Robert Duvall's most endearing acting roles, has a Texas county and an Eddy County, New Mexico, village named after him.

Goodnight and Loving are credited with blazing the trail to deliver cattle to the Bosque Redondo Reservation at Fort Sumner in New Mexico Territory in 1866, and the trail eventually stretched to Denver and Cheyenne.

"The trace that led from Texas to Fort Sumner is generally known as the Goodnight Trail, while that which Goodnight later blazed direct to Cheyenne is called the Goodnight and Loving Trail, though sometimes the terms are used interchangeably," J. Evetts Haley wrote in Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman (Houghton Mifflin, 1936).

At least, that's the legend. Two historians, however, have recently suggested that maybe the trail should be known as the Chisum Trail.

Chisum vs. Goodnight & Loving

"Erroneous popular mythology holds that Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving made the first drives across West Texas and up the Pecos River to New Mexico markets in 1866 and 1867," James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely argued in Confederates and Comanches: Skullduggery and DoubleDealing in the Texas-New Mexico Borderlands (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021). "In fact, this route was established prior to Goodnight and Loving and was known as the Chisum Trail decades before Goodnight's biographer branded it the GoodnightLoving Trail."

The authors partially base that argument on an 1897 civil engineer's map that "labels the cattle route leading from the Concho River watershed to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River as 'the Chisum Trail."

This story is from the April 2023 edition of True West.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the April 2023 edition of True West.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM TRUE WESTView All
Where Did the Loot Go? - This is one of those find the money stories. And it's one that has attracted treasure hunters for more than 150 years.
True West

Where Did the Loot Go? - This is one of those find the money stories. And it's one that has attracted treasure hunters for more than 150 years.

Whatever happened to the $97,000 from the Reno Gang's last heist? Up to a dozen members of the Reno Gang stopped a Jeffersonville, Madison and Indianapolis train at a watering station in southern Indiana. The outlaws had prior intelligence about its main load: express car safes held about $97,000 in government bonds and notes. In the process of the job, one of the crew was killed and two others hurt. The gang made a clean getaway with the loot.

time-read
2 mins  |
July - August 2024
Hero of Horsepower -  Los Angeles lawman William Hammel tamed one of the West's wildest towns with hard work and horseless carriages.
True West

Hero of Horsepower - Los Angeles lawman William Hammel tamed one of the West's wildest towns with hard work and horseless carriages.

Los Angeles lawman William Hammel tamed one of the West's wildest towns with hard work and horseless carriages.

time-read
7 mins  |
July - August 2024
From the Basin to the Plains
True West

From the Basin to the Plains

Discover Wyoming on a road trip to Cody, Casper and Cheyenne.

time-read
4 mins  |
July - August 2024
COLLECTING AMERICAN OUTLAWS
True West

COLLECTING AMERICAN OUTLAWS

Wilbur Zink has preserved the Younger Gang's history in more ways than one.

time-read
3 mins  |
July - August 2024
Spencer's West
True West

Spencer's West

After the Civil War, savvy frontiersmen chose the Spencer repeating carbine.

time-read
4 mins  |
July - August 2024
Firearms With a Storied Past
True West

Firearms With a Storied Past

Rock Island gavels off high profits from historic firearms.

time-read
2 mins  |
July - August 2024
She Means Business!
True West

She Means Business!

An energetic and ambitious woman has come to Lincoln, New Mexico, to restore the town's legendary Ellis Store.

time-read
2 mins  |
July - August 2024
Ride that Train!
True West

Ride that Train!

HERITAGE RAILROADS KEEP THE OLD WEST ALIVE ACROSS THE UNITED STATES.

time-read
5 mins  |
July - August 2024
Saddle Up with a Western
True West

Saddle Up with a Western

Old West fiction and nonfiction are the perfect genres to fill your summer reading list.

time-read
7 mins  |
July - August 2024
RENEGADES OF THE RAILS
True West

RENEGADES OF THE RAILS

RAILROADS WERE OPEN SEASON FOR OKLAHOMA AND INDIAN TERRITORY OUTLAW GANGS.

time-read
6 mins  |
July - August 2024