Mulberry Canyon
Merkel, Taylor County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Human activity in this area has been traced to prehistoric eras. Native American tribes once roamed this land with the buffalo, deer, turkey, mountain lion, and black bear. Among the first recorded ventures into the canyon were the Military Road survey and the forty-niner mail route of 1849. The Military Road was used by the Butterfield Stage-Overland Mail route from 1858 to 1861. The canyon was named for the mulberry trees that grew along the largest creek. Cattle ranchers began to use the canyon in the 1870s. The last herds of buffalo passed through Mulberry Canyon in 1878 just before pioneer families began to build communities. In 1879 settlers planted maize, corn, and wheat; the first cotton was planted in 1886. The last black bear lived as a pet on the Brown Ranch in the 1880s. Over half a dozen small communities sprang up in the canyon. Ten churches and ten schools have served the area, which at its peak had a population of 500. The earliest marked grave in White Church Cemetery is dated 1883. Nubia, the only town, had a post office until 1917. The last store closed in 1946. In 1997, descendants of the pioneer settlers still occupied much of Mulberry Canyon. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Human activity in Mulberry Canyon reaches back to prehistoric times, when Native American peoples hunted buffalo, deer, and bear across the land. The canyon saw the 1849 forty-niner mail route and, from 1858 to 1861, the Butterfield Overland Mail's stagecoaches before cattle ranchers arrived in the 1870s and the last buffalo herds passed through in 1878. Pioneer families then planted maize, corn, and cotton and raised more than half a dozen small communities, served by ten churches and ten schools, whose descendants still occupied the canyon in the 1990s.
Why it matters
Mulberry Canyon compresses the whole arc of the West Texas frontier — Indigenous hunting grounds, overland mail, the vanishing buffalo, and pioneer settlement — into a single valley.
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Related events
- · Butterfield Overland Mail (1858–1861)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Chadbourne
Bronte vicinity, TX
The U.S. Army planted Fort Chadbourne on the West Texas frontier in October 1852 to shield settlers pressing into country still held by Comanche and other Plains peoples. It honored Lieutenant T. L. Chadbourne, killed at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma during the Mexican-American War. From 1858 to 1861 the post doubled as a key station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route, watering stagecoaches carrying passengers and mail toward California.
Castle Peak
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From 1858 to 1861 the Butterfield Overland Mail carried the first through passenger and mail service linking the Mississippi to the Pacific, and its drivers steered by this 2,400-foot peak, visible for thirty to forty miles. Then called Abercrombie Peak for a U.S. Army colonel who defended the frontier, it struck the newspaperman Waterman Ormsby — riding the first westbound Butterfield stage — as resembling a fortress. The height was later renamed Castle Peak.
Vicinity of Indian Fight
Merkel, TX
On New Year's Day 1871, a party of 18 Texas Rangers and cowboys overtook Indian raiders here who had driven off horses stolen in Coleman County. The raiders took cover in the heights west of Mountain Pass, and the running fight lasted all day before they abandoned the horses and slipped away at nightfall. One of the pursuers, J.M. Elkins, later recorded the clash in his memoir of frontier fighting.
Mountain Pass Station
Merkel, TX
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