Presidio, Texas

Born in Kentucky. Came to Texas before 1846. Was a U. S. Army scout in Mexican War. Established first mail service from San Antonio to El Paso in 1851. Drove first Butterfield Overland Mail coach in 1858 through dangerous Comanche Indian territory from Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos to El Paso. "Skinning" Mule teams never driven before, made the drive in 4 days without rest or relief, his 6-foot frame in buckskins decorated with revolvers and Bowie knives, and his sandy hair and beard flowing to his waist. A Confederate scout in the Civil War. After July 1862, when Federals seized El Paso and the Davis Mountains (to make the longest enemy occupation in Texas), liaison and courier toConfederate refugee colony in Juarez. Knowing country and people well, moved without fear of the Federals. Spread false rumors of Confederates massed in remote deserts, to send enemy troops on fruitless, exhausting chases. Most dreaded scout known to the occupation. Singled out by the Union Commander, was hunted by force commissioned to take him alive. Was killed resisting capture by Federal troops in camp at Spencer's Ranch near here on April 3, 1864. (1964)

Milton Faver (Don Melitón), first cattle baron of Presidio County, was born in Virginia about 1822. Nothing is known about his family and childhood. As a young man he fought a duel in Missouri and, believing he had killed his opponent, fled to Mexico. By 1840 Faver worked for Francisco De León in a flour mill in Meoqui, Mexico, 100 miles south of Ojinaga, then called Presidio del Norte . In Mexico Faver met Francisca Ramírez, whom he soon married. Faver became a freighter between Meoqui and Ojinaga, and when the business became profitable he expanded it to freight goods over the Chihuahua Trail and the Santa Fe Trail . He made many hazardous trips with his men and once was severely wounded in an Indian attack. Sometime between 1855 and 1857 Faver's freighting business became so well established that he left it with employees and moved his family from Meoqui to Ojinaga, where he opened a general store. In 1857 Faver, his wife, and their only child, Juan, left Ojinaga and settled on the frontier in the Chinati Mountains of Presidio County, Texas, twenty-five miles north of the Rio Grande. Beginning in August 1858 Faver bought small tracts of land around three springs-Cibolo, Cienega, and La Morita-to secure a water supply for cattle and sheep. He established cattle ranches near Big Springs Cibolo and Cienega Spring and a sheep ranch at La Morita Spring. The properties were collectively known as Cibolo Creek Ranch . Faver made Cibolo his headquarters and built a 10,000-square-foot adobe block compound with circular defense towers at the north and south corners to protect the inhabitants from Indian attack. At Cienega he built an eighty-nine-foot stockade with defense towers at the northeast and southwest corners. El Fortín de la Morita was unfortified and later suffered loss of life in a raid by Apache Indians. Faver's prime market for cattle was the military at Fort Davis before and after the Civil War . During the war Fort Davis was abandoned, and without military protection cattlemen in the area suffered from Indian raids. Most of Faver's herd of 300 cattle was stolen. Left with only thirty-two corralled calves, he began to rebuild, and eventually his herd exceeded 10,000 cattle. Although he registered an F-shaped brand, most of his herd ran unbranded and wild in inaccessible mountain canyons. By 1883 Faver owned only 2,880 acres of land, but he used the open range and cheap Mexican labor to build his self-sufficient ranches. He paid the ranch hands 12½ cents per day to tend cattle, goats, and sheep and cultivate vegetables and fruits in gardens and orchards near the springs. Faver traded for anything he or the workers needed but could not grow or make themselves. Like other early area ranchers, he made homegrown peach brandy, which was a popular barter item. Faver was an autocrat and individualist; he made the law on his ranches and meted out his own justice. His ideas about money and cattle sales were eccentric. He accepted only hard money, and when he sold cattle he stood by the gate and received the coins for each animal as it passed. In 1888 the aging Faver decided to get out of ranching. He offered D. G. Knight the use of his land, cattle, horses, and equipment for three years. Faver would pay the operating expenses for the first year. For his work, Knight would receive every third calf branded and every eighth steer on the range. Due to low market prices and underweight cattle, however, the contract proved unprofitable for Knight. At the expiration of the contract in 1889, Faver sold his remaining cattle to Joe Humphreys. Milton Faver died of natural causes on December 23, 1889, in Presidio County. He was buried in an adobe mausoleum on a hill overlooking El Fortín del Cíbolo.

La Junta de los Ríos is a term used to describe the fertile region surrounding the juncture of the Río Conchos and the Río Grande. Located at 29 degrees latitude and 104 degrees longitude, La Junta forms a roughly triangular shape extending from the rivers' juncture to approximately twenty-five miles in each direction along the banks of the two waterways. Straddling the United States-Mexico border at the cities of Presidio, Texas, and Ojinaga, Chihuahua, people have perhaps continuously cultivated La Junta de los Ríos longer than any other area of Texas. This is due to the excellent farmland created by the region's fertile soil and relatively well-watered floodplains along the banks of the river, which serve as natural irrigation. In comparison to the surrounding dry and sandy Chihuahua Desert, La Junta has proved to be an oasis to the various peoples who have called it home. Although drought and temperature extremity-it ranges well below freezing in the winter to upwards of 120 degrees in the summer in the region-are deterrents for human habitation, humidity in La Junta is very low and long summers allow for multiple harvests in one year. Archeological evidence suggests that humans first arrived in La Junta sometime in the Paleo-Indian Period from 8,000 to 6,500 B.C. These and later hunter-gatherers used atlatls and bows and arrows to hunt javelinas, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, foxes, and various other forms of small game. Humans also feasted on prickly-pear fruit and other edible plants native to the region. At some point in the Late Archaic Period, agriculture arrived at La Junta, and by 700 A.D. many of the region's Indians had begun to adopt more sedentary lifestyles. Influenced by pre-Puebloan cultures like the Mogollons, the Indians of La Junta eventually began to use pottery, live in jacal dwellings, and form extensive trade networks. At the turn of the sixteenth century, a group of sedentary-agriculturalists-later known to the Spanish as Patarabueyes -made their home at La Junta. These people lived in single-story, flat-roofed pit houses of adobe construction in settlements of various sizes. Some of these villages were small clusters of a few families, whereas others like Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe had over 1,000 residents and a complex political structure. Because La Junta was centrally located between the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and the Indian tribes of the Southern Plains, the Patarabueyes profited from the trade between these two groups. The hunter-gatherer Jumano Indians facilitated this trade by traveling to places as far as the Caddo Confederacy of East Texas for goods to bring back to La Junta. There is some scholarly debate over the relationship between the Jumanos and the sedentary Indians of La Junta. Some believe that the Jumanos were ethnically related to the Patarabueyes, while others argue that the two Indian groups were simply convenient trading partners. The most recent interpretation has the Patarabueyes and the Jumanos sharing a mutual relationship wherein both groups maintained cultural distinctions but relied on one another for basic needs such as food. In 1534 one African and three Spaniards arrived in La Junta de los Ríos. They were the first non-Indians to see the region. Led by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca , these strangers had been members of the failed Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, which had shipwrecked off the Texas coast after failing to find riches in Florida. Arriving in La Junta after an amazing six-year journey, Cabeza de Vaca found the La Juntans to have, "the best physiques of any we saw" and remarked that they lived in, "houses that really looked like houses." The people of La Junta cooked for the new arrivals, provided them with furs and other provisions for the remainder of their journey, and gave information about the Pueblo civilizations to the northwest. After a few weeks stay in La Junta, Cabeza de Vaca and his men departed, eventually finding their way to Mexico

Presidio is on the Rio Grande, Farm Road 170, and State Highway 67 eighteen miles south of Shafter in southern Presidio County. The surrounding area is the oldest continuously cultivated area in the United States. Farmers have lived at Presidio since 1500 B.C. By 1400 A.D. the area Indians lived in small, close-together settlements, which the Spaniards later called pueblos ( see PUEBLO). The first Spaniards came to Presidio in 1535, when Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca , and his three companions stopped at the Indian pueblo, placed a cross on the mountain side, and called the village La Junta de las Cruces. On December 10, 1582, Antonio de Espejo and his company arrived at the site and called the pueblo San Juan Evangelista. By 1681 the area of Presidio was known as La Junta de los Ríos , or the Junction of the Rivers, for the Río Conchos and the Rio Grande join at the site. In 1683 Juan Sabeata , a Jumano Indian, reported having seen a fiery cross on the mountain at Presidio. The settlement then became known as La Navidad en Las Cruces. About 1760 a penal colony and a military garrison of sixty men were established near Presidio. In 1830 the name of the area around Presidio was changed from La Junta de los Rios to Presidio del Norte. Anglo settlers came to Presidio in 1848 after the Mexican War . Among them was John Spencer, who operated a horse ranch on the United States side of the Rio Grande near Presidio. Ben Leaton and Milton Faver built private forts in the area. In 1849 a Comanche raid almost destroyed Presidio, and in 1850 Indians drove off most of the cattle in town. A post office was established at Presidio in 1868, and the first public school was opened in 1887. Presidio pioneer Richard Daly was an early postmaster as well as a school teacher. He also apparently operated a store and was a business associate of Milton Favor. In 1930 the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway reached Presidio. The town incorporated in 1981. The population grew from ninety-six in 1925 to 1,671 in 1988, but the number of businesses declined from seventy in 1933 to twenty-two in 1988. At the end of 1988 Presidio experienced a population boom due in part to previously undocumented immigrants enrolled in the amnesty program. The population in 1990 was 3,072. That number had increased to 4,167 in 2000 with a reported 84 businesses.

In late 1535, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his three surviving companions reached the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos — the region the Spanish would later call La Junta de los Ríos. After seven years of wandering, they found something they had not seen since the Gulf Coast: thriving agricultural villages. The Jumano people grew corn, beans, and squash along the river bottoms and lived in permanent houses. Cabeza de Vaca called them 'the people of the cows' because their traders ranged onto the southern plains to hunt bison. The four survivors rested here before continuing west. La Junta would remain a critical Spanish waypoint for the next two centuries, and the modern town of Presidio occupies the same ground where the Jumano farmed.

First Anglo-American farmer in Presidio County. In August 1848, Mr. Leaton acquired the building and it has since been known as Fort Leaton. (1936)