Mulberry Canyon

Nubia, the canyon's one town, sold itself to distant buyers: publications such as Our Homes and Country printed pictures of its land and houses. Ranchers from 1874 hauled lumber from Fort Worth. The post office opened in 1888 in the general store, and when it closed in 1917 the Nubia and Riney schools merged as I.X.L. District 27, named for a ranch. Camp Barkeley hurt the canyon in the 1940s, when the army bought or leased much of the land and maneuvers damaged buildings and ground. By 2000 Nubia had two residents.

What the plaque says

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)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Abilene State Park — 15 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 16 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Pioneer Museum — 20 mi
  Nolan County's settlement story in a dozen rooms of Judge R. A. Ragland's 1906 house in Sweetwater, a town that started as a dugout store for buffalo hunters and a post office called Blue Goose.
• Frontier Texas! — 20 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.

More markers nearby

• Cornelia Clark Fort — steps away
• Castle Peak — 5.7 mi
• Mountain Pass Station — 5.8 mi
• Near Site of Indian Battle — 5.8 mi