Malvado

Meyers (Myers) Canyon, a valley with an intermittent stream, begins just west of State Highway 349 in central Terrell County at the juncture of Downie and Eightmile draws (at 30°10' N, 102°04' W), and runs southeast for twenty miles to its mouth (at 29°59' N, 101°52' W) on Lozier Canyon, a mile north of the Malvado community in the southeastern part of the county. Big Canyon meets Meyers Canyon three miles west of the Fort Meyers ruins, and Outlaw Canyon joins it seven miles west of the Southern Pacific tracks. The path of Meyers Canyon sharply dissects massive limestone and crosses hard limestone and limy mud on flat plains. The canyon continues over alluvial and wash deposits on steep to gentle slopes. The local soils are generally dark, calcareous stony clays and clay loams, which support oaks, junipers, grasses, and mesquites. Prehistoric people lived in the limestone caves and rockshelters on the canyon and took water from Meyers Spring. They left middens, fire-blackened cave walls, and broken tools. Sixteenth-century Comanches left cave art on the overhanging ledges at Meyers Spring; the cave art proves their contact with the Spanish.

Meyers Canyon and Meyers Spring were named for one of the black Seminole soldiers who served under Lt. John L. Bullis and who lived at Fort Meyers. In the late 1870s and early 1880s Black Seminole scouts, who were known as the Black Watch, occupied the small outpost called Fort Meyers, which was located on the canyon and near Meyers Spring. Reportedly the fort consisted of fifteen one-room adobe huts and two stone houses, all roofed with ocotillo. The scouts patrolled the area to protect settlers from Indian attack. After Bullis retired from the army, he lived for a time at the old fort in the canyon. He built a rock reservoir at the spring, which he signed with his name and the year 1901. In the early 1990s only ruins of the fort remained.