U.S. #2869l
1994 29¢ Charles Goodnight
Legends of the West
Issue Date: October 18, 1994
City: Laramie, WY, Tucson, AZ and Lawton, OK
Quantity: 19,282,800 panes
Printed By: Stamp Venturers
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: 10.1 x 10
Color: Multicolored
Born in southern Illinois, Charles Goodnight moved to Texas with his family when he was 10 and quickly learned the tricks of frontier survival. By 1866, Goodnight owned thousands of longhorn cattle, but like many other Texans, had no easy way to get his herds to lucrative eastern markets.
Instead he turned to other potential buyers – the military posts and mining towns of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Pioneering markets in the West, he and Oliver Loving, an experienced drover, opened the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Although many cattle were lost along the way, the survivors sold readily, establishing the Goodnight-Loving Trail as one of the main highways of the cattle drives and launching Goodnight as one of the first great cattle barons.
After his banking ventures failed in 1876, Goodnight moved to the lush valley of the Palo Duro Canyon. There he built an immense empire, grazing 100,000 cattle on more than 700,000 acres. To improve his stock he imported Durhams and Herefords, transforming the Texas longhorn into today’s cattle. He also blazed a second trail to the railheads in Dodge City, Kansas, which eventually extended to Montana. In 1929, he died at age 93, the typical western cattle baron.