The Charles Goodnight Memorial Trail

Goodnight wintered his longhorns in 1875-76 at Rincón de las Piedras on the upper Canadian in New Mexico, then scouted the Panhandle with a cowhand named Panchito and chose Palo Duro Canyon. He hired Nicolás Martínez, a former Comanchero who knew the old Indian trails, to guide the outfit east to Tecovas Springs and then across the tableland. They reached the canyon rim on October 23, 1876. His first quarters, within today's state park, were a dugout roofed with cottonwood and cedar logs, with abandoned Comanche lodge poles for rafters.

What the plaque says

The Charles Goodnight Memorial Trail The highway from this museum to the Palo Duro State Park (12 miles east) approximates course used by Charles Goodnight, outstanding Texas cowman and trail blazer, when he trailed 1600 cattle from Colorado to found first ranch on the staked plains of Texas in 1876. He entered precipitous Palo Duro Canyon by way of old Comanche Indian trail; drove thousands of buffalo from what is now park area; established his home ranch a few miles farther down canyon. Goodnight was born in Illinois, March 5, 1836. At age of 9 he rode bareback to Texas behind covered wagon driven by his parents; he hunted with Caddo Indians beyond the frontier at 14; guided Texas Rangers fighting Comanche and Kiowas at 25; blazed cattle trails about 2,000 miles long with Oliver Loving at 30. In partnership with John G. Adair, he expanded his original Palo Duro ranch into the giant JA and other holdings of more than a million acres and 100,000 cattle. He preserved the buffalo, founded a college, encouraged the settlement of the plains and led in a long fight for law and order. This foremost plainsman died March 12, 1929; and is buried at Goodnight, Texas. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — steps away
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.
• Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  A 1938 Depression-era lake on Tierra Blanca Creek that has gone dry, now 7,664 acres of shortgrass, cottonwood canyon and a prairie dog town on the High Plains south of Umbarger.
• Palo Duro Canyon State Park — 13 mi
  The upper end of the canyon the state bought in 1933, where CCC crews built the road to the floor and the army burned the winter camps of the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne in 1874.
• TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 13 mi
  A summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.

More markers nearby

• J. Evetts Haley — steps away
• Georgia O'Keeffe in Canyon — steps away
• Mary E. Hudspeth House — 0.3 mi
• First Methodist Church of Canyon — 0.4 mi