Historical Marker
Goodnight-Loving Trail (4)
After leaving Fort Sumner, the Goodnight-Loving Trail forked in two directions. This branch developed by Oliver Loving in 1866, followed the Pecos River to Las Vegas, and the Santa Fe Trail to Raton Pass. The great Texas cattle drives followed this and other routes to Colorado and Wyoming until 1880.
New Mexico was the birthplace of several famous figures in American history, including the outlaw Billy the Kid, the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who was one of the last men to walk on the moon.