Bones & Blood on the River
There is no river that personifies the mythic Texas frontier more than the Pecos, and no crossing on that river more infamous than the one whose very name was born of death: Horsehead Crossing, one of the most dangerous yet reliable fords for those traveling across the state in the 1800s.
In fact, you may have passed by there yourself, headed west from San Angelo, dodging the refineries and crowded interstates of Midland/Odessa, preferring instead the two-lane highways. If so, you’d likely have blown by at 75 miles per hour. If you were fiddling with your radio or reaching for water, you’d miss it. A rest stop under an old creaky windmill and a historical marker are the only things to denote a river veiled in mesquite and cloaked in mystery.
By the late 19th century, westward expansion was in full swing. The Civil War was over, the first transcontinental railroad almost complete, and for those traveling the Texas frontier by foot, hoof or wagon, there were only two choices: cross the Pecos, desert-drenched and unruly, or cross the Panhandle, a dry, endless stretch of grassland and canyons, home to warring native peoples. Many chose the Pecos; many did not survive.
Crazed with thirst after miles of desert, both cattle and horses plunged into her currents, gorged themselves on briny water and got mucked down in steep banks and quicksand. Wagons toppled, spilling both lives and possessions. Over time, bones became trail markers, bleached cairns guiding the next desperate soul to water and reminding travelers how easily one can become a memory.
The Pecos has been called the graveyard of the cattleman’s hopes, the crookedest river in the world and the most desolate country ever explored. Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos is perhaps best remembered for the traffic of the Comanche, the ruts of the Butterfield stagecoach and the horns and hooves of cattle trails — most specifically the Goodnight-Loving Trail.
Although not the first to push beeves across open range, when Charles Goodnight, a former Texas Ranger, and Oliver Loving, an experienced cattleman, decided to dodge the hostile plains on their route to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and instead point southwest to the Pecos, it was an act of courage and entrepreneurship. While most went north, they hooked southwest, then upwards. Of course, this was also a gamble, but so was life itself in the 19th century.
The Pecos River we know today, narrow and sinuous as it is, has little in common with the Pecos of yesteryear. As with almost all our Texas rivers, we have irrigated, dammed and throttled her until she is but a shell of her former self, a vanishing waterway to be spanned via steel expanses and concrete piers with nary a thought. Horsehead Crossing, once treacherous and death-defying, now sits desolate and mostly forgotten. But this was not always the case.
In 1866, water ruled both life and landscape, and it was this way for Goodnight and Loving. Rivers and weather decided who would survive and who would not, who would progress and who would retreat, and the Pecos River, which favored sharp canyons over gentle embankments and could easily flood up to 100 feet in width with depths of 15 feet, was not shy in deciding.
This is desert country, a land we know today as thick with wind turbines, pump-jacks and pipelines, a flat, dusty place of creosote, saltbush and tumbleweed. A thirsty land. At the normal pace of a drive, the route between the Concho River in San Angelo and the Pecos River would have been a death sentence, and it was for many. The Goodnight-Loving crew lost 300 head of cattle on that first trek west between San Angelo and Horsehead Crossing, but they kept on. They devised a new plan: three days and three nights to cross the desert, no sleep or rest except what could be gained in the saddle. It worked. Subsequent trips had practically zero losses.
Although Goodnight and Loving followed their namesake trail only twice more before a skirmish with natives resulted in Loving’s untimely passing, their tenacity and creative venture is one of the most famous, and it paved the way for more to follow. But theirs is an endeavor most of us know only through books and movies, the work of historians J. Evetts Haley and Patrick Dearen, the novelist Larry McMurtry, in whose words, intended or not, we find romance in hardship. We live vicariously through the legends of the past.
You’d be unlikely to see horses at Horsehead Crossing today, or longhorns, or stagecoaches, or Comanches for that matter, other than once a year each October when the Pecos County Historical Commission puts on its annual event commemorating the crossing. The namesake skulls are long gone; only stories and memories remain.
And we need those stories. The men and women of the frontier possessed traits that we too hold, though they are often smothered by today’s digital, advanced, instant gratification cushion of a world. They are traits that many of us long to feel again: resourcefulness, courage, determination, grit, instinct. Perhaps what we really seek is to be unbridled, unconquered.
I’ve heard it said that to study history is to study change — that understanding the past, with its nuances and truths, builds empathy. Perspective. We learn that what appears so different on the surface has a common core underneath. Those who traversed the western frontier with her unruly rivers, her dry and dust-choked earth, all walked with a purpose. They walked toward the future, toward survival. Are they really so different from us in this? The tumultuous Pecos with her life-threatening crossings was, after all, simply another obstacle to navigate. At least now we have bridges.
Published October 2026
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