UPDATE! After 7 long years the Barn is finished! Thank you to all those that contributed (and continue to do so). From Larry McMurtry (our first donor and author of Lonesome Dove), to the Colorado Dept. of Local Affairs who gave us the final push with a $500,000+ match grant. Planning for possible uses for the Barn are underway, but require cooperation from the City of Pueblo (owners), Pueblo County and Colorado State Dept of Parks and Wildlife (access). The log is contained in a magnetic key holder, so please bring a pen/pencil. They're maybe swag along with the log. Pets on leases only.
Just because the gates may be open, don't assume you can wander in. This is private property. You don't want a visit from the State Parks Patrol or Sheriff's Department, right? If you'd like a tour of the Barn you may schedule a tour by visiting goodnightbarnpueblo.org.
We've also forged alliances with the Goodnight Historical Center in Goodnight, Texas and, the Panhandle Plains Museum in Canyon, Texas. Thank you to these outstanding organizations for your assistance with the chronology of Goodnight in the southwest.
Text from the Colorado Historical Sociey (History Colorado) sign not accessible from road:
The Goodnight Barn is the sole surviving structure of Charles Goodnight’s Rock Canyon Ranch. One of the more intact and unique examples of the vernacular architecture of open range cattle ranching in southeastern Colorado, the Goodnight Barn is built from local materials – Dakota Formation sandstone bricks and hand-hewn pine beams.
Southern Colorado was a cultural meeting ground for Hispano and Anglo-American architectural styles, and that is apparent in the Goodnight Barn. While Charles Goodnight intended his barn to serve a fundamentally practical purpose, he also meant it to be a statement of status and display of wealth. The barn and the stone corrals were a symbol of status to other settlers in the area and communicated his intention to establish himself and his wife as prominent citizens of Pueblo.Goodnight incorporated ornament decorative elements such as arched hay doors that were not common on barns and outbuildings in southeastern Colorado. He also used deliberate symmetry into the barn’s architecture. Goodnight’s barn was fairly unique for its sheer monumentality. It served as an early example of the influx of Anglo-American architectural culture that was, at the time, only beginning to shape the burgeoning town of Pueblo.
The Goodnight Barn was originally built as a horse barn with space for tack and carriage storage, and was later converted to use as a dairy barn. It is situated on a slightly cocked north-south axis between Thatcher Road and the Arkansas River in Pueblo, Colorado.
In 1927, the Colorado State Historical Society wrote a letter to Charles Goodnight, then residing in Clarendon, Texas, soliciting information about Goodnight’s days in Colorado and the building of this ranch near Pueblo. Goodnight’s response was brief but cordial and gave the basic chronology of the ranch buildings. He stated that he had purchased the original adobe buildings on the ranchstead from Charles Peck in 1869, then built the barn and its stone corrals in 1871, and sold the ranch in 1875 to one J. Livesy.
No need to cross the fence to find the cache.