Dateline: November 22, 2007

Goodnight Ranch makes national historic list

The 1888 Charles and Mary Ann (Molly) Goodnight Ranch, located 20 miles west of Clarendon in Armstrong County, has been designated in the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service. 

This property joins some 2700 properties in Texas with this designation.

The Goodnight Ranch is one of the earliest large homes in the Panhandle of Texas and was the ranch headquarters for Goodnight’s 102,400-acre ranch.  The home is representative of both early homes on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle as well as a dwelling uniquely associated with one of the pioneers of the region. 

Charles Goodnight achieved great success as a cattleman and was partially responsible for blazing a cattle trail from Texas to Colorado. In addition, he established several of the largest early ranches in the Panhandle and in Colorado, and with Molly’s assistance, saved the area’s native buffalo lines for posterity. 

This Victorian style house is the last home he built and one in which he lived for the last thirty-eight years of his life.  Plans are now underway for a $3 million campaign to restore the homestead and furnishings, build an interpretive center, and raise an operations endowment.

The Armstrong County Board and many other partners throughout the area are dedicated to restoring the home that Charles Goodnight built so that it can become a centerpiece of the planned Charles Goodnight Historical Center.  The restored home and interpretive center will provide a place where future generations will learn the stories of Charles Goodnight-stories of vision, determination, achievement, frontier life and the development of the cattle industry.

Retaining its integrity of location, design, setting, association, materials, and workmanship, the home is much like it was when Charles and Molly Goodnight lived there.