DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the marker out here in Childress County has to say, and I'm gonna do it justice. In the years between 1866 and 1871, this land was not a place you wandered through lightly. Those were what the marker calls the hostile Indian years, and through that stretch of uncertainty and danger, one of the great cattle drives in Texas history cut its path right across this ground.
They called it the Goodnight Trail. The man behind it was Colonel Charles Goodnight — trailblazer, the marker calls him, and that word is doing some heavy lifting. Goodnight was pushing thousands of cattle along this route, driving them from Texas all the way to United States forts out in Colorado and New Mexico.
And right here, at this very spot, he drove those thousands of cattle down to water. You stop and think about that — thousands of animals, thirsty after hard miles of open country, coming to drink at a watering hole on ground you could stand on today. That watering hole is still here, in a manner of speaking.
By 1886, the site had grown into something else entirely — a town called Childress. And that old cattle watering hole, the one Goodnight's herds drank from during some of the most perilous years this region ever saw, is now a lake sitting right inside Fair Park. The trail is gone.
The longhorns are long gone. But the water's still there — and now you know what it remembers.
What the marker says
In hostile Indian years of 1866-71, route of great cattle drives from Texas to U.S. forts in Colorado and New Mexico. Col. Charles Goodnight, trailblazer, drove thousands of cattle to water here. Site later (1886) became Childress. Cattle watering hole is now lake in Fair Park. (1964)