Along the Banks of Alamo Creek

 



The old timers claim that Alamo Creek was once a Comanche war trail.

I don't know if it was.  I suspect so.

What I do know is that along its dry banks lived Gilberto Luna, one of the legendary personalities of the Big Bend country.

Luna lived in a hut - called a jacal - which he built by applying mud plaster to latticework walls of cane grass and ocotillo.  You can see it for yourself north of Santa Elena Canyon on a caliche thoroughfare now known as the Old Maverick Road.  I saw it last week for the fifteenth time while backpacking in Big Bend National Park with my son Robert.

Luna built the jacal sometime around 1890.  He farmed on Alamo Creek, which produced enough seasonal water to grow vegetables.  He made a living selling produce and goats to the workers of the nearby Terlingua cinnabar mine.

Some say Luna lived to the ripe old age of 108.

He died in 1947 in Fort Stockton.

According to an early park superintendent, he outlived eleven wives and fathered thirty children.

That's right.  108.  Eleven wives.  Thirty children.  In his jacal.

Along the banks of Alamo Creek.



Gilberto Luna