The Goodnight-Loving Trail (sometimes known simply as the Goodnight Trail) ran from Young County, TX, southwest to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River, up the Pecos to Fort Sumner, NM, and on into Colorado. In 1866, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving drove a first herd of longhorn cattle over the Butterfield Overland Mail route to the Pecos River, then worked their way north. In 1867, the route across New Mexico was altered fifty or sixty miles to the east, crossing the Gallinas Valley near Capulin Mountain before swinging back towards Raton Pass.
At Raton Pass “Uncle Dick” Wootton had established a toll station near the summit and charged Goodnight ten cents a head for passage. In order to avoid Dick Wootton’s toll road, Goodnight opened a new passageway through Tinchera Pass into Colorado. In 1868, Goodnight entered into a contract with John Wesley Iliff in which he agreed to deliver cattle at the Union Pacific Railroad town of Cheyenne, WY and the trail became well-established and used until the 1880s, when rail development in the southwest rendered cattle drives no longer necessary.
Harding County, NM
