Howdy! If you have seen the classic Howard Hawks western Red River with John Wayne, you can imagine the magnitude of Charles Foxwing Goodnight's life. The television miniseries, Lonesome Dove, was also strongly influenced by Goodnight. Charles was a trailblazing cattleman after the Civil War; in fact, the Goodnight-Loving Trail was named for him. He is credited with inventing the chuckwagon, a variation of a military wagon with a food box with drawers covered by a canvas tarp. At one time, he controlled 1,325,000 acres of Texas ranchland. He nearly single-handedly defined our image of being a cowboy. As he aged and market conditions changed, he scaled back his operation. He and his wife, Mary Ann (Molly), settled down, built a nice Folk-Victorian house in 1888 on a down-sized ranch of just 102,400 acres in the Texas panhandle. They witnessed and were part of the changing west, including the disappearance of the buffalo. Molly took a leading role in helping preserve the buffalo. Many existing herds are genetically connected to the calves Molly protected and raised. With Molly's passing in 1926, Charles still had some giddy-up left. A year later, he married a possible distant cousin, Corrine Goodnight. He was 91 and she was 26. He lived another two years passing away in December 1929.
His home has passed through various hands but was eventually donated to the Armstrong County Museum in 2005. The house has been beautifully restored. It is now a Texas Historical site which is available to tour. On the tour, as you ascend to the second floor, you discover that after decades of driving heifers, eating beans, and sleeping under the stars, Charles had difficulty sleeping indoors. He still preferred to throw down his bedroll and sleep outside. The house allows you to step back in time and imagine a life on a remote 19th Century Texas ranch.
Take a walk with Birkenstock.
