Loving's Bend

This panel has been permanently removed. Oliver Loving was fifty-four when he died at Fort Sumner on September 25, 1867, and by then he was known as the dean of the trail drivers: before the Civil War he had trailed a Texas herd to Chicago. He was also a slaveholder; the 1860 census at Pleasant Valley, Texas, records him with five children and eight enslaved people. After his death Goodnight left him in a temporary grave at Fort Sumner while the herd went on to Colorado, then came back for him.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Loving's Bend In July 1867 Oliver Loving, a partner in the Goodnight-Loving cattle concern, was attacked by Comanches while driving cattle to Fort Sumner. Wounded, Loving held off the attack for two days and nights. With the help of Mexican traders, he made it to Fort Sumner, where he died of gangrene. Fulfilling his promise, Charles Goodnight exhumed Loving's body, reburying him a year later in Weatherford, Texas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park — 13 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 — 22 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

• Goodnight-Loving Trail — 1.7 mi
• Espejo's Trail — 4.7 mi
• Josephine Cox "Grandma" Anderson — 11 mi
• Mother Magdalen and the Sisters of Loretto (1852-1968) / Carlsbad — 11 mi