Along about 150 years ago, Texas was a brand "new" place... opening wide to settlers who were looking for a piece of ground to call their own, a place to build a home, a life with some fresh hope and promise. It was the new Frontier, at a time when the Wild Wild West really was wild, where a man might be called to cash it in at any time just around the next cut bank in the trail.

The new settlers huddled in close together to have the protection of their neighbors, their numbers and weapons being the only defense against the roving Indian bands. They worked at building a start on the open range land, from the dirt up. The Indian tribes were plentiful, they were being disposessed of their freedom, their lands, their food supply, and they weren't taking it lightly. The word "Cowboy" wasn't even a part of the language yet, but the seeds were sown - there were plenty of cattle in Texas.

Spanish cattle were first brought to New Spain (Mexico) in the early 1500s. Gradually, as the Spaniards pushed ever northward into what we now know as the Southwest, they came with cattle to establish missions in hope of taming the Indians of "Tejas". These missions were agencies of the Spanish crown as well as the Church. However, when Mexico won it's independence from Spain in 1821, the mission system collapsed. The Plains Indians had by then acquired the horse, and they remained wild, free and dangerous.

Thus was formed a partnership of legend. Goodnight knew Indian fighting, was a young strong plainsman, and he knew the country of west Texas. Loving, senior by 24 years, knew cattle and knew how to manage large herds over the worst terrain. Both were men of the highest honor and character, willing to go to heroic lengths to account for every stray, every cow and willing to ride for days to see that every cent of proceeds got to its rightful owner.

The pair left the frontier of Texas on June 6, 1866 with a 2,000-head mixed herd and an outfit of 18 armed men to blaze the trail that went down large into history as the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Goodnight rode a dozen miles ahead of the herd scouting for water, grazing sites and Indians while Oliver and the men broke the herd to trailing condition and followed across the measureless plains.

By the 1870's, cattle drives were delivering millions of cattle to market. There was great competition among the trail bosses in recruiting the best cowboys. Colonel Charles Goodnight, co-founder of the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail, noticed that cowboys preferred working on the trail drives with the best cooks. He purchased a war-surplus munitions wagon that was sturdily built and able to withstand rough overland travel, and had a "trail kitchen" constructed on the back. This new mobile kitchen proved so popular that nearly every trail boss and rancher in the west began to copy it. People called it the "Chuck Wagon" in honor of its inventor. It soon became the standard trail kitchen for cattle drives and roundups.

In the spring of 1867 Loving and Goodnight returned to Texas, ready to start a new drive. This third drive was slowed by heavy rains and Native American threats. Loving went ahead of the herd for contract bidding, taking only Bill Wilson, a trusted scout, with him. Although he told Goodnight that he would travel at night through Native American country, Loving became impatient and pushed ahead during the day. His careless action brought a Comanche attack in which he was seriously wounded. The weakened Loving sent Wilson back to the herd, eluded the Native Americans, and, with the aid of Mexican traders, reached Fort Sumner, only to die there of gangrene. Before he passed away Goodnight assured him that his wish to be buried in Texas would be carried out. After a temporary burial at Fort Sumner, while Goodnight drove the herd on to Colorado, Goodnight had Loving's body exhumed and carried back to Texas. Stories differ as to who accompanied the body back to Weatherford, but he was reburied there in Greenwood Cemetery on March 4, 1868, with Masonic honors.

Goodnight had the body temporarily interred at Fort Sumner in a metal coffin. There is some disagreement as to who actually brought Oliver Loving's remains back to Texas, but most report that Goodnight returned to the Fort some months later and exhumed the casket, surrounded it with charcoal, encased the whole in a box made of pounded-out tin oil cans and loaded it onto a wagon. This was taken back over the Goodnight-Loving Trail, hundreds of miles, all the way to Loving's home in Weatherford, Texas, where it was delivered to his family "...the strangest and most touching funeral cavalcade in the history of cow country..." wrote J. Evetts Haley in his landmark 1936 book Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman.