Goodnight Without Frontiers

“A purely reverential portrait of Goodnight by his famed biographer.”

Now, a hundred and thirteen years after his birth, his massive frame still looms strong among the horsemen of the storied West.

He rode horseback from Illinois to Texas when he was nine years old. He was hunting with the Caddo Indians beyond the frontier at thirteen, launching into the cattle business at twenty, guiding Texas Rangers at twenty-four, blazing cattle trails two thousand miles in length at thirty, establishing a ranch three hundred miles b eyond the frontier at forty, and at forty-five dominating nearly twenty million acres of range country in the interests of order. At sixty he was recognized as possibly the greatest scientific breeder of range cattle in the West, and at ninety he was an active international authority on the economics of the range industry.

He always rode beyond the borderlands, upon ranges of unspoiled grass… The vast and changing coutry over which he moved, the fertility of a mind quickly grasped the significance of climate and topography, the inexhaustible engery of his mind and body, and the long period through which he constantly applied himself to the Western World, operated to produce in this man an ample nature surpassing many of the more famous characters of frontier history.

J. Evetts Haley
Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman
1949