El Fortin del Cibolo

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about El Fortin del Cibolo, out here in Presidio County. Now, the Big Bend region is not a place that forgives weakness. The desert between Fort Davis and the Rio Grande in the mid-1800s was about as unforgiving a stretch of land as Texas had to offer: remote, dry, and sitting wide open between civilization and the border.

And into that stretch walked a man named Milton Faver. Or, as the locals knew him, Don Meliton. The year was 1857.

Faver, born around 1829, and he'd live until 1889, set about building something that had never been built in that particular gap before. El Fortin del Cibolo. A fort.

A private fort. Not a military installation, mind you. A private one, belonging to one man and the ranching empire he was assembling around himself.

Now here's where the story gets interesting. The marker tells us that Faver reportedly learned about natural springs in this area from Indians who traded at his general store in Presidio del Norte. Think about that for a moment.

A man is running a general store. Traders come in. Word passes across a counter.

And from that intelligence, those springs, Faver eventually acquired vast acreage surrounding the water. Because out here, water wasn't just valuable. Water was everything.

Those springs were the only steady water source in the vicinity, and Faver moved to control them. He didn't stop there. He built an irrigation system.

And with that system he fed immense vegetable gardens and a peach orchard; a peach orchard, out in the Big Bend desert, which is the kind of detail that makes you stop and reconsider what a determined person can pull off. Those crops from Cibolo ranch supplied soldiers at Fort Davis, Fort Davis, established back in 1854, sitting to the north, and the citizens of the nearby mining town of Shafter as well. And the fort itself?

El Fortin del Cibolo was no rough-hewn shack. It was heavily fortified. One story, built of adobe, cottonwood, and cypress.

Walls running one to four feet thick. A courtyard configuration at its heart. Rounded towers at the northwest and southeast corners.

Gun ports cut into those thick walls. Wood canales (drain spouts) running along the structure. Hand-built stone fences marking the edges of this outpost against the primitive surroundings pressing in from every direction.

It was the first major outpost built between Fort Davis and the Rio Grande. And it survived, which, out here, is its own kind of miracle. The structure you can encounter today has been reconstructed and restored using archeological evidence and, notably, hand labor.

The same kind of deliberate, physical effort that Don Meliton Faver himself would have recognized. El Fortin del Cibolo stands as one of the region's most significant historic structures; and a rare surviving example of a private fort in the Big Bend. One man, one set of springs, and walls up to four feet thick.

Turns out, sometimes the most consequential trade made at a general store counter isn't the one involving goods at all.

What the marker says

Constructed in 1857, El Fortin del Cibolo was the headquarters of the vast ranching empire of Milton (Don Meliton) Faver (ca. 1829-1889). The heavily fortified structure was the first major outpost built between Fort Davis (established in 1854) and the Rio Grande. Faver, who reportedly learned of natural springs in this area from Indians who traded at his general store in Presidio del Norte, eventually acquired vast acreage surrounding the springs, thereby controlling the only steady water source in the vicinity. He built an irrigation system that supplied water for his immense vegetable gardens and peach orchard. Cibolo ranch crops supplied soldiers at Fort Davis and citizens of the nearby mining town of Shafter. El Fortin del Cibolo is a rare surviving example of a private fort in the Big Bend region. Reconstructed and restored based on archeological evidence and using hand labor, the one-story adobe, cottonwood, and cypress structure features a courtyard configuration with walls one to four feet thick; rounded towers at the northwest and southeast corners; gun ports; and wood canales (drain spouts). Hand-built stone fences accentuate the fort's primitive surroundings. It is one of the region's most significant historic structures. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1992.