Goodnight-Loving Trail

The town just southeast carries the trail man's name, but not first. Swiss immigrants who settled it in the 1890s called it Vaud, after their canton; by 1904 the Italian laborers they hired for their farms had made it Florence; and in 1908 it became Loving, for Oliver Loving, mortally wounded on the Pecos nearby in 1867. The rename had a knock-on effect: when Robert Florence Love founded his town in Lea County that year, Loving was taken, so he added a suffix and made it Lovington.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Goodnight-Loving Trail After leaving Fort Sumner, the Goodnight-Loving Trail forked in two directions. This branch, deve- loped by Oliver Loving in 1866, followed the Pecos River to Las Vegas, and the Santa Fe Trail to Raton Pass. The great Texas cattle drives followed this and other routes to Colorado and Wyoming until 1880.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park — 12 mi
  A zoo and garden of the Chihuahuan Desert on the Ocotillo Hills above Carlsbad, whose animals are injured or orphaned wildlife that cannot go back to the wild.
• Carlsbad Caverns National Park — 21 mi
  The way into the cave has changed four times: a guano miner's bucket, a wooden staircase, a 750-foot elevator, and now a timed ticket and a switchback trail down the natural entrance.

More markers nearby

• Loving's Bend — 1.7 mi
• Espejo's Trail — 6.2 mi
• Josephine Cox "Grandma" Anderson — 9.3 mi
• Mother Magdalen and the Sisters of Loretto (1852-1968) / Carlsbad — 9.3 mi