The Old Hatchet Ranch and Barn

The Old Ranch and Barn is said to have been built by Charlie Goodnight. He is the same one that the Goodnight Loving trail is named after. It is along I-25 just north of Colorado City. Our ranch is behind this on the original land that was the Hatchet Ranch. The Colorado Cattle Company sold about 20,000 acres to the developer that devided it into lots of between 40 and 250 acres. The land went from France to Spain to Texas to the US.

We took the road into the Ranch and crossed the Green River. In some research that I did a few years ago, I learned that the book and movie Lonesome Dove was written off a tail of two Texas Rangers who, in later years moved cattle from Texas to Montana, when one of them was shot by Indians, and asked the other to take his body back and bury him where two creeks met. The book and movie was changed from the real story a little. But the real story was of Charlie Goodnight, and the creeks were the Greenhorn River and Muddy creek. The meet about a 1/4 mile north of this picture. Anyway, I think this is a nice picture of the Greenhorn.