Goodnight-Loving Trail in Shackelford County

The trail's northern leg took shape within two years of the first drive. Loving blazed it from Fort Sumner to Raton Pass and on around the Rockies to Denver in the fall of 1866; a year later Goodnight moved it fifty or sixty miles east, past Capulin Mountain. At Raton Pass, Uncle Dick Wootton charged ten cents a head, and Goodnight paid under protest. By 1868, with a contract to deliver cattle to John Iliff at Cheyenne, he had found Tinchera Pass and skipped the toll. The marker stands on private ranch land, and no route is given here.

What the plaque says

Goodnight-Loving Trail in Shackelford County Shackelford County was an unorganized and largely unsettled county of 914 square miles when Oliver Loving (1812-1867) and Charles Goodnight (1836-1929) engaged in cattle drives through the region between 1866 and 1867 along what would become their namesake trail. Their success driving cattle to market in New Mexico and Colorado inspired many cattlemen to traverse the trail, ranking the trail third in the volume of cattle driven to market annually between 1866 and 1875. Portions of what became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail were originally blazed by the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, also known as Southern Overland Mail, which operated between 1858-1861. This route crossed from the northeast corner of the county diagonally toward the southwest, nearly dividing the county into equal parts. Smith's Station, located on Chimney Creek west of Albany, was the only station in Shackelford County. Segments of the Butterfield route were explored by the U.S. Army in the late 1840s and early 1850s as its troops followed the advancing frontier. The trail differed from those that travel to northern markets, as it traversed through desert and over mountain passes, subjecting the herd and cattlemen to raids and environmental hardships. In addition, cattle on the Goodnight-Loving Trail were delivered directly to markets as opposed to railheads for further transport. Both destinations, however significantly contributed to the state's post-Civil War economy. The cattleman legacy in Shackelford County, born along the Goodnight-Loving Trail, contributed to the formation and development of the county and remains a significant part of its identity. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Phantom Hill — 11 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Old Jail Art Center — 13 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.
• Fort Griffin State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The ruins of an 1867 cavalry post on a plateau above the Clear Fork of the Brazos, judged unfit for habitation and used nine more years, now home to the official state longhorn herd.
• Frontier Texas! — 22 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.

More markers nearby

• Smith's Station — 0.9 mi
• Bud Matthews Switch of the Texas Central Railway — 1.5 mi
• Big Country Baptist Assembly — 7.9 mi
• Fort Phantom Hill — 11 mi