The
i LLKCTII
A quarterly publication of TSCA
Group Working to Keep Historic Home in Armstrong County
Let's Save the Charlie Goodnight House
By Charlie Blanton ^ E n
In my youth, as many of you prob- E - ^ *, ^
ably did as well, I joined in an
effort to "Save the Battleship { j
Texas,"and we did. Now is a time
for a new cry and effort, "Save the
Charlie Goodnight House," and we
must. There is a small group of
preservation-minded Texas historiaris
at the Armstrong County
Museum leading that effort, and
they need our help.
By Texas Parks & M
I first learned of the scope and
depth of Colonel Charlie Goodnight from J. Evetts
Haley. In my own Haley collection, I have Mr.
Haley's description of being there when the Colonel
was buried at Goodnight, Texas. Years later in my
visit to Goodnight, Texas, and the Colonel's
gravesite, I learned that the Goodnight house was
just up the road, and so I made that visit, too. What
memories. What a tragedy for Texas to let present
and future generations go "unlearned" about the
contributions to the formation and development of
the Texas frontier that Charlie Goodnight made.
Goodnight, Texas is just a wide spot in the road, if
I'm traveling from Dallas to Amarillo, and you may
have breezed through, not knowing the history that
was in your rearview mirror. Why not move the
O
TFidW Colonel to Austin and enshrine
him there in the Texas State
Cemetery with other Texas
heroes? Because the Colonel and
his home belong in the Panhandle
of Texas; we need to keep them
there.
Let me share a story I read recently
by Glen T. Howard in the 1984
I^_I^^^ ~edition of True West magazine.
ildlife Department.
Exhuming Big Foot in Texas
The story of re-burying one of Texas' great men.
In Frio County, Texas, there was the little town of Big
Foot, located in the northeast corner of the county. The
town was settled mostly in the 1890s and was named
for one of its most eminent citizens, Big Foot Wallace,
this being his nickname. His real name was William
A. A. Wallace.
Over the years, Big Foot, Texas, like so many small
towns that were passed by the railroads and highways,
ultimately dwindled away. By 1935, all that
remained was a store or two and its cemetery,
reminding all of a once aggressive, prosperous group
of people with good schools, churches, stores and a
post office.
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