Luna's Jacal and the Comanche War Trail

Author's photo of Luna's Jacal, Santa Elena Canyon in distance

Now if you aren't a Big Bend desert rat, Luna's Jacal is a jacal in Big Bend, that was on the Comanche Trail of all places. I remember the first time I visited Luna's Jacal, during a Comanche Moon in September, and learned of the story of how Gilberto Luna had lived right there on the Comanche Trail all those years ago, successfully surviving through Comanche raids into Mexico.

What a story. But .. that is apparently the LEGEND. The truth is Luna probably wasn't living there while the Comanche War Trail was still active. Here's a piece I wrote for Wikepedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_Jacal)

 

History of Luna's Jacal

The write-up for the National Register of Historic Places[3] states

In the early years, Alamo Wash was on the Comanche War Trail through the Park, and Luna somehow established peaceful relations with these savage warriors and also with the Apaches resident in the vicinity. That he survived the incursions of these raiding Indians is a tribute to his diplomacy

While a popular story associated with the jacal, some doubt exists that Gilberto Luna lived at the jacal while the Comanche War Trail was active. The NRHP write-up uses the Road Guide to Paved and Improved Dirt Roads of Big Bend National Park[4] as source material, originally published in 1980. As late as the 1987 revision of the guide this same verbiage is intact, but in the 2010 revision of the guide, the verbiage had been removed.

In the book Exploring The Big Bend Country[5] an interview by Peter Koch with a grandson of Luna, Demencio C. Luna Jr., puts Luna's arrival at Alamo Wash after the close of the Comanche Trail:

My grandfather [Gilberto Luna] was born around 1840 in Durango, Mexico where he lived for many years. In 1901, at the age of sixty he crossed the Rio Grande into the United States

The book A Guide to Hispanic Texas [6] says Luna’s Jacal was built about 1900, which agrees with Gilberto Luna’s grandson’s claim, and years after the last band of Comanches moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma in 1874-75.

So did Gilberto Luna live on the Comanche Trail during those years when the Comanche were raiding into Texas? I'll let you decide. At the end of the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the newspaper man upon learning the truth about Liberty Valance's death says "This is the West, sir, When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Author's photo of Luna's Jacal

 

Location

lat/long 29.215486,-103.534785

[3]Battle, David G. (February 1974). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form: Luna Jacal". National Park Service. Retrieved 23 June 2011.

[4]Road Guide to Paved and Improved Dirt Roads of Big Bend National Park. Panther Junction, TX: Big Bend Natural History Association in Cooperation with the National Park Service, 1980

[5]Koch and Price. Exploring The Big Bend Country, 2007, p.75

[6]Simons and Hoyt. A Guide to Hispanic Texas, 1992, p.142