Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0098/00983.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 30KB | 473 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00983}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{The Big Bend
Chapter 1: World Of The Big Bend}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tyler, Ronnie C.}
$Affiliation{National Park Service;U.S. Department Of The Interior}
$Subject{big
bend
canyon
chisos
grande
mountains
peak
rio
rock
hill
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1984}
$Log{See Santa Elena Canyon*0098301.scf
See Big Bend Region*0098302.scf
See Adams' Santa Elena*0098303.scf
}
Title:       The Big Bend
Book:        Chapter 1: World Of The Big Bend
Author:      Tyler, Ronnie C.
Affiliation: National Park Service;U.S. Department Of The Interior
Date:        1984

Chapter 1: World Of The Big Bend

     [Wild, vast and isolated, the Big Bend region of Texas is one of the great
wonders of the southwest.  Yet for all of its remoteness and inhospitality to
settlement, it has enjoyed a rich human past.  This book recounts the story of
the Big Bend region, from aboriginal times to recent events.]

     Although hard bread and unsalted venison did not make a holiday feast,
Texas Ranger Capt.  Charles L. Nevill probably enjoyed his meal as he pondered
his good fortune.  He was, after all, alive - a remarkable blessing,
considering his recent adventures.  A few days earlier, when he and four of
his best rangers had set out to accompany a State land survey on a float down
a section of the Rio Grande known as the Big Bend, they had thought a good
deal about the dangers of traveling through an uncharted terrain.  Yet such
considerations had not adequately prepared them for the river's unsympathetic
fury.

[See Santa Elena Canyon: Sun-splashed mouth of Santa Elena Canyon. Front
Cover.]

     Nevill, his four rangers, and surveyors John T. Gano, Edward L. Gage, and
E. M. Powell - "the greenest set of boatmen that ever started down any river"
- had set out from Presidio del Norte on December 19, 1881, intending to
navigate a previously unexplored section of the Rio Grande.  Nevill was aware
that other expeditions had attempted to float these canyons but had been
stopped by natural obstacles - or fear.  He saw more clearly the difficulties
ahead when he damaged his own boat the first day, and his fears increased when
his party entered the mountains.  The banks rose higher around them, and the
current swept them along toward the first big rapids.  The men cautiously
steered their boats around threatening boulders, and with the dangers
temporarily behind them were able to proceed.  "Everything went lovely,"
Nevill wrote.  "The boys learned 'to boat' very fast."

     But soon carelessness, deceptive currents, and whirlpools combined to
teach the overconfident crew a lesson.  They slammed into a rock, scattering
men, supplies, and over 300 rounds of ammunition across the water.  "I was
carried down the river like I was shot out of a gun," Nevill recalled.  "I had
on my big boots, coat, pistol and belts, and of course as soon as I struck an
eddy I sank.  When I came up, I caught on a rock and by standing up my head
and shoulders would be out of the water."

     The rumors about the treacherous canyons and rapids of the Rio Grande
were true.  The captain no doubt swore at his carelessness as he perched
precariously on the rock, clutching his favorite pipe between his teeth. While
gesturing to a companion about to swim into the current, Nevill lost his
balance and slipped off the rock.  "I went under . . . [and] was so played I
thought I would never make it out."  Having "no further use for a fine pipe,
. . . I spit it out."

     Nevill finally pulled himself ashore and took stock.  He, Gano, and a
ranger had almost drowned.  Besides his field glass, he lost nearly all the
ammunition and most of the food.  Christmas dinner consisted of fresh venison
without salt.  Neither coffee nor sugar survived the mishap.  Nevill was sick
for several days, but resumed the trip on January 2, only to face Santa Elena
Canyon, the "one with a bad reputation - one that no outfit ever ventured to
tackle before," he wrote.  Recalling that the boundary survey team of 1852 had
scouted the canyon, then sent an empty boat through but that "no two planks
came out together," Nevill and his party decided that not everyone should risk
a canyon that local Mexicans described as "utterly impassable."  Two boatmen,
in fact, deserted before reaching the canyon.  Nevill took two men who could
not swim and rode up on the Mesa de Anguila to watch the surveyors' progress.
"I was so high above them, when they would hallow at me I could not
distinguish a word said, and they could not hear me at all," he reported.  The
boatmen halted at the rock slide on January 4 and lost a day and a half
portaging around it.  Everyone finally reached the mouth on January 9.

     The Nevill-Gano expedition was the first documented float through Santa
Elena, but Nevills brief published report did not attract attention.  What was
even then acknowledged to be one of the least known and most beautiful
sections of the State remained unknown.  While Clarence King, John Wesley
Powell, and Ferdinand V. Hayden were describing the majestic beauty of the
Sierra Nevadas, the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Park, Texans grew
curious about the vast "Great Bend."  The Mexican Boundary Survey team had
wrecked its boats in Mariscal Canyon in 1852.  Western artist George Catlin
floated down the Rio Grande in 1855 but apparently left 110 journals or
pictures.  By 1883 curiosity had so overcome the editor of the El Paso Daily
Herald that he appealed to other newspapers to contribute to an expedition to
explore the Big Bend.  Its "sublime and majestic scenery" would soon be
available to the Nation from detailed reports he would publish, he predicted.
"Texas is about to eclipse anything that has heretofore been produced within
the limits of North America."

     An expedition similar to the one the editor had visualized was organized
in 1899 when Robert T. Hill of the U.S. Geological Survey floated from
Presidio to Langtry.  Intrigued by rumors of ghosts in the Chisos Mountains,
bandits lurking along the river, and 7,000-foot gorges, Hill and his small
party left Presidio in October.  Three weeks later they pulled themselves from
the sandy Rio Grande with geographical and geological data for Hill's study
and the first photographs of the region.  Although Hill believed they were in
constant danger, the trip in reality was little more than a pleasant float
through one of the most scenic areas of the Southwest.  "We . . . navigated
and mapped three hundred and fifty miles of a portion of one of America's
greatest rivers which hitherto had been considered impassable," Hill boasted.
Traveling through the "longest and least known and least accessible" canyons
in the country, Hill "escaped dangers which had overwhelmed those who had
attempted the canyons before: and our little party dispersed contented with
its success."

     Though Hill found no 7,000-foot deep canyons, his survey culminated years
of desire and several attempts to navigate the Big Bend canyons.  Hill's
successful trip disproved rumors of cutthroat bandits lurking behind each
cliff and corrected the fanciful tales of tricks that nature played on
unsuspecting intruders.

     Many dangers Hill encountered were simply the products of a desert
climate and an unbelievably rugged landscape.  Even today the most impressive
feature of the Big Bend is its vastness.  Lodged squarely in the crook where
the Rio Grande encounters the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains and turns
abruptly from a leisurely southeastern course to the northeast - hence the
name Big Bend that Lt. William H. C. Whiting applied in 1849 - the country
remains in its "original chaotic state."  Including the territory from
Candelaria or Ruidoso on the Rio Grande 50 miles eastward to Marfa, then
paralleling the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks for over 100 miles through
Alpine, Marathon, Sanderson, and Dryden on the north, the Big Bend has always
been an out of the way place visited only by the adventurous or patient.

     The cultural area encompassed in the term "Big Bend" is often larger. It
includes Fort Davis, 20 miles beyond Alpine, where soldiers and Texas Rangers
who patrolled the three-quarters of a million acres that now make up the
National Park were stationed.  Present-day Van Horn, 55 miles northwest of
Fort Davis, is usually included in the region, and some think of the Big Bend
and the Trans-Pecos as being practically synonymous.  Writers have always
considered the Big Bend in broad terms.  Folklorist J. Frank Dobie researched
the Trans-Pecos for several of his stories of lost Spanish treasures, wild
mustangs, and cowboys.  It is also the scene of untold stories that would
rival Dobie's best and the legends of Pecos Bill himself.  To Lt. William
Echols, viewing this terrain from the back of a camel in 1860, the Bend was a
"picture of barrenness and desolation," a place fit to be called the last
frontier in Texas.  Nor did 40 years ameliorate its ruggedness, for surveyor
O. W. Williams found it so impassable in 1901 that he had to make many of his
measurements by triangulation rather than by chain.

     Although the region is geologically complex, the Indians had a simple
explanation for the unusual landscape.  When the Great Creator had completed
the earth and placed the stars in the sky, the fish in the sea, and the birds
in the air, He had a massive heap of stony rubble left over.  He hurled it
into the Trans-Pecos where it landed in a pile and became known as the Big
Bend.  Ross A. Maxwell, a geologist and former superintendent of the national
park, has offered a more scientific explanation, which relies on standard
geological theories.  Fossil shells, sedimentary rocks, and other evidence
indicate that the Big Bend once lay under a shallow sea.  As the continent
heaved and shifted, various parts of the land were exposed to the air,
permitting the growth of swamp vegetation and providing habitat for many
animals now long extinct.

     Over 100 million years ago a general shift in the continent produced the
Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madres, which extend from Canada to Mexico. The
Chisos Mountains jut out of the Big Bend desert between the two, a mass of
twisted and crumpled rock but not as high as either major range.  Further
shifting created Terlingua Fault, an elongated block of the earth's crust that
broke and tilted upward.  Thousands of years later the Rio Grande, aided by
the drainage patterns of the fault itself, patiently carved Santa Elena
Canyon.

[See Big Bend Region: The Big Bend region.]

     The remains of this process not only explain the existence of a complex
region, but also provide some of the Big Bend's most interesting features.
Dinosaur bones, evidence of marshes, two skulls of a crocodile-like monster,
and other examples have been found.  The popular flagstone rocks of the
Boquillas Formation are the remains of lime mud deposited during the early
Upper Cretaceous period 130 million years ago.  Other animal remains familiar
only to professional paleontologists are thought to have been native to the
Big Bend.

     The ruggedness of the land is matched by the harsh climate.  The sun
scorches down most of the year, and only vegetation adapted to heat and
drought flourishes.  Big Bend residents endure dry summers, broken only by 15
to 17 inches of rainfall annually from dark clouds apparently snagged on the
peaks of the towering Chisos.  The surrounding lowlands are less fortunate,
receiving only 10 to 12 inches each year.  Simply put, the Big Bend is a
desert, occupying the northern part of what once was the vast Chihuahuan
Desert that covered two-thirds of the present Mexican state of Chihuahua,
one-half of the state of Coahuila, and a large portion of western Texas.  The
Rio Grande, which has cut canyons through the heart of the mountains, seems at
times to have its very existence threatened by this ferocious desert.

     The Spaniards had a name for such an area: despoblado or uninhabited
land.  The Big Bend is the mouth of the despoblado which, on the map, appears
as a funnel-shaped area bounded on the east by the road from Saltillo to San
Juan Bautista, near Eagle Pass, Texas; on the west by the road from Chihuahua
City to El Paso; and on the south by Parras and Torreon.  It forms the
northern boundary of this desolate yet impressive region.  The Spaniards so
feared the hostility of both Indians and the land that they traveled from El
Paso to San Juan Bautista by circling southward through the frontier
settlements of Mapimi, Laguna de la Leche, Cuatro Cienegas, and Monclova, then
swinging northward along one of the well-traveled routes.  Only the Rio Grande
penetrates the despoblado although several other rivers play around it.
Battered and worn smooth by wind-whipped sand, its features show the marks of
a perpetual struggle wind, rain, and sun matched against the land. Even the
vegetation marks off and defends its living space.  "Each plant in this land
is a porcupine," wrote a 19th-century traveler.  "It is nature armed to the
teeth."

     The most recognizable feature of the Big Bend begins near Lajitas where
the Rio Grande meanders through the foothills of the Mesa de Anguila and the
Sierra Ponce.  Santa Elena Canyon is shallow and open for the first 11 miles,
with the river gathering momentum as it approaches the mesa.  Steep cliffs and
narrow passages mark the beginning of the deepest portion of the gorge.  In
the swifter current, boatmen are less sure, the margin for error considerably
reduced.  The canyon walls reach 1,500 feet, virtually imprisoning every
creature that enters.  Hill and his crew watched in sympathy as a covey of
quail attempted to fly high enough to escape the rocky confines, only to fail
and settle exhausted on one of the pinnacles.

     Santa Elena, which probably received its name from Louis Ramirez who
founded the nearby Mexican settlement of the same name, has always offered a
challenge to those who would navigate the Rio Grande.  About 6 miles from the
mouth of the canyon is a rock slide that has troubled all canyon explorers.
Arthur C. V. Schott, the draftsman with the Boundary Survey team,
unimaginatively sketched the "falls" in 1852.  The Nevill party took a day and
a half to portage their boats over the rocks, and Hill called the spot Camp
Misery.  Trapping down the Rio Grande in the first decade of this century, T.
M. Meler hesitated before entering the canyon.  Just as the party almost
decided not to risk the unknown dangers of the chasm, they spotted a message
carved on the face of a large rock by Hill and the Geological Survey
expedition of a few years before.  "So we sed if uthers could go thro we could
do it too," Meler reported.  Their confidence was shaken, however, when just a
mile inside the canyon they came face to face with the rock slide - 20-foot
boulders piled 200 to 300 feet high, with water pouring through.  But Meler
and his party carried their boats over and continued.  "It was some haird job
but wee wer haird trappers," he explained.

     Another well-known feature of the canyon, located just a mile below the
rock slide on the Mexican side, is Smuggler's Cave, a dark opening about
halfway up the wall, reportedly a hideout for cattle rustlers and outlaws.
Smoke discoloration on the ceiling and tobacco and sardine cans on the ground
seem to indicate a more recent resident than an Indian or a 19th-century
bandit.  Hill was particularly impressed with rumors of badmen on the loose in
the Big Bend.  He called that portion of the river below Lajitas Murderer's
Canyon.

     The mouth of the canyon is the most spectacular sight.  Flowing placidly
from the 1,500-foot precipice, the river idles over a vast, fertile
floodplain, as Terlingua Creek, the tributary in the Big Bend most likely to
contain water, joins it at the base of the fault.  The mouth of the canyon was
the most often seen part of what is today the national park, even during the
18th and 19th centuries, when it was variously called the "wall" of San
Damasio, the "Great Canon San Carlos," and the "Grand Puerta."  The lowlands
at the mouth of the canyon were a beautiful sight to Meler and his friends,
because "it taken us most of 4 days to git thrown that hole."  The Geological
Survey party "lingered long in contemplation of this most remarkable feature."

     Today the trip can be made in a day if the water is high enough.  Usually
it is a pleasant 2-day float, made enjoyable by the feeling that grips the
traveler when night descends and the canyon is lighted only by moonlight
reflecting off the walls and the water.  Then, if not before, one is convinced
of the grandeur of nature and the insignificance of a solitary man.  It is
only one of many places in the Big Bend where a traveler can be alone with his
thoughts for a long period.  Shielded from mechanical interruptions - and even
radio waves - the interior of Santa Elena Canyon is an expressive reminder of
what Hill and his 19th-century comrades were among the first to see.

[See Adams' Santa Elena: The mouth of Santa Elena Canyon, photographed by
Ansel Adams in 1949.]

     Farther down river is Mariscal Canyon, the least accessible of the
national park's three major canyons.  Isolated at the southernmost tip of the
Big Bend, Mariscal probably received its name from a local jefe, Albino Villa
Alfelias, a well-known Indian fighter.  The Spanish word mariscal can mean
either marshal or blacksmith.  Perhaps it also connoted an important person,
or chief, such as Alfelias.  Because of its proximity to the old Spanish
presidio of San Vicente, Mariscal has also been known as Little San Vicente
Canyon.

     Carved from rugged Mariscal Mountain, the canyon contains some of the
most spectacular scenery on the river.  Sheer walls reach 1,600 feet.  The
horizon is squeezed into ribbons of light that separate the cliffs,
illuminating the river as it forces its way over rock slides and boulders worn
smooth.  While it has no rock slide to equal the one in Santa Elena, Mariscal
can be difficult to navigate if the river is high.  The 1852 Boundary Survey
team wrecked their boat, probably in Mariscal, and were forced to continue the
journey on foot."  Mariscal is perhaps the most often traveled of the three
major canyons, easily floated in less than a day, even when the water is low.
It was inhabited until recently by a man who wanted to get away from
civilization.  He lived in a shallow cave on the Mexican side of the river,
and dubbed his camp Dropp Knife, Mexico.  A short distance upriver is the Big
Bend's best known candelilla wax camp, where the candelilla plant is boiled
and pure wax was recovered.  It stands on the Mexican side of the river, and
can be visited by almost everyone who floats through the canyon. Floaters must
paddle furiously to complete the trip through Mariscal Canyon, because the
winds at the canyon exit blow upriver with force.

     Boquillas, the longest of the Rio Grande canyons, is carved from the
massive limestone peaks of the Sierra del Carmen range.  Boquillas' walls are
more open than Mariscal's and reach as high as 1,500 feet.  Some have
suggested that the gorge is named Boquillas (a slang form of "little mouths"
in Spanish) because of the canyon's narrow mouth.  Perhaps it got the name
from the hundreds of small erosions in the Sierra del Carmen range, which
resembled little mouths.  The Spanish word itself translates as the opening to
a pant's leg or the mouth of an irrigation canal, either of which could be
construed to be related to the mouth of a canyon.  The high peak near its
entrance is Schott Tower, named for Arthur Schott.

     Boquillas is possibly the least known of the canyons historically.  Both
the American and Mexican boundary survey teams marched around it rather than
risk its unknown dangers in 1851 and 1852.  Col. Emilio Langberg of the
Mexican team cited its length and the "many opportunities its land gives for
enemy ambushes" as his reason for circling the canyon.  Although Captain
Nevill's party might have floated through it in 1882, they left no record that
they did.  The first documented passage through Boquillas was Hill's
expedition of 1899, which discovered that Boquillas is probably the calmest of
the three major canyons.  Adventurers frequently raft or canoe through the
canyon today, making a leisurely trip of 2 or 3 days.  There are no rapids or
dangerous spots in the canyon, and the small Mexican village at the mouth
makes it one of the most frequented spots in the national park.

     In the midst of the Big Bend desert stands the Chisos Mountains, a
legendary refuge of ghosts and spirits.  They reminded Colonel Langberg of
"distant figures like castles and turrets whose heights can be seen from afar;
one never loses sight of this beautiful range through nearly all the
expedition."  Although Chisos was the name of a tribe of Indians, the term has
now been inextricably associated with ghosts, an association first mentioned
in print by Hill in 1901.  But the old storyteller Natividad Lujan once told
Judge O. W. Williams of Fort Stockton a spellbinding tale about the Apache
chieftain Alsate that might explain the association of ghosts with the
mountains.  The warrior was betrayed to Mexican officials at San Carlos by
Leonecio Castillo.  The tribe was then marched off into slavery in southern
Mexico, and Alsate was executed.  It was soon whispered among the residents of
the Big Bend that Alsate's ghost roamed his old hunting grounds.  When
Castillo, the informer, left the country, the ghost disappeared.  Believing
that the danger had passed, Castillo returned.  So did the ghost.

     One version of the story describes a confrontation between Castillo and
the ghost of Alsate.  Castillo had stopped for the night in a cave in the
Chisos when he recalled betraying the chief.  Thinking of Alsate's oath of
revenge, Castillo laughed out loud, then glanced up to see Alsate's face
carved in the features of the mountain across the valley.  He quickly turned
away, seeking to blot out the vision, but he heard Alsate's soul crying out
for revenge.  Castillo disappeared from the Big Bend.  Although the tale
varies from storyteller to storyteller, the rock formation named for Alsate is
easily seen in Green Gulch in the Chisos, about a mile east of the basin road
junction.

     Others have claimed that the term "ghosts" is associated more directly
with events that happen in the mountains themselves.  Some have reported that
the play of moonlight creates a "spooky" effect on the gray vegetation of the
mountainsides.  One hunter claims to have seen an entire valley illuminated as
if in daylight, while Ross A. Maxwell has described a "luminous pulsating
light" dancing over the mountain peaks or on the roads.  Several newspapers
have carried stories of strange "Marfa lights," with the usual explanation of
ghosts of long-departed Indians and lost gold mines that glow at night. But
Maxwell offers a more reasonable explanation: perhaps the lights are
reflections of moonlight produced by tiny mineral grains or the phosphorescent
glow given off by rotten wood.

     Of course, there are those who insist that the mountains themselves might
have been shrouded in mist - and therefore appeared "ghostly" when seen by the
Spaniards.  Still, the mystery of the Chisos and the ghosts remains. "Nowhere
have I found such a wildly weird country," wrote an 1896 visitor to the
Chisos.  "The very silence is oppressive.  A man grows watchful for his own
safety and becomes awe-struck by nature in her lofty moods."

     One of the most magnificent sights in the Big Bend is the view from the
South Rim of the Chisos.  Half a day's journey from the Basin, the South Rim
can be reached on foot or horseback.  After passing by Boot Rock, Boot Canyon,
and Boot Springs, one can see on a clear day Santa Elena Canyon some 20 miles
to the southwest and Schott Tower another 25 miles to the east.  The visitor
who watches majestic vultures soar off the rim cannot help but understand the
feelings of Texas Ranger Captain E. E. Townsend as he looked out over the Big
Bend from the nearby Burro Mesa:

     It was a vision of such magnitude as to stir the sluggish soul
     of a Gila Monster.  It was so awe-inspiring that it did deeply
     touch the soul of a hardened human bloodhound . . . .  I resolved
     that upon the arrival of my ship I would buy the whole Chisos
     Mountains as a . . . playground for myself and friends and that when
     no longer wanted, I would give it to the State . . . .

     The pinnacle of Emory Peak, 7,800 feet high and often enveloped by
clouds, is accessible to hardy climbers over a 1-mile side trail.  If
anything, the vista from here is even more majestic.  Only from high above the
surrounding desert is the mountainous nature of the Big Bend fully apparent.
The Basin lies 2,400 feet below.  The massive peaks of the Sierra del Carmen,
reaching miles into Mexico, where they are called the Fronteriza Range, break
the view to the east, while Mariscal Mountain is visible to the southeast, and
Terlingua Fault dominates the southwestern vista.

     The Chisos are alpine heights in the midst of a desert.  In a sense, they
form a biological island.  Plants and animals that once flourished throughout
the region when it was wetter and cooler are now isolated in the mountains,
trapped in the mild heights because they cannot survive in the desert.
Completely contained within the national park, the Chisos reach almost 8,000
feet above sea level.  They are located in the center of a trough formed by
the Mesa de Anguila on the southwest and the Sierra del Carmen-Santiago
Mountain range on the northeast.

     Passing Green Gulch, the highway continues through Panther Pass and into
the Basin, a depression from 1,500 to 2,000 feet deep.  The Basin is
surrounded by the tallest peaks in the Chisos.  To the southeast is Casa
Grande (7,500 feet), or Big House, a sheer cliff that reflects a prism of
colors in the evening sun.  The highest peak in the cluster is Emory Peak
(7,835 feet), named for William H. Emory, the chief surveyor of the U.S.
Boundary Survey team of 1852.  Between Casa Grande and Emory Peak is Toll
Mountain, named for Roger W. Toll, a former superintendent of Yellowstone
National Park, who was instrumental in establishing Big Bend National Park.
Ward Mountain is named after Johnny Ward, a cowboy on the G4 Ranch.  Carter
Peak, the small mountain near the Window, or the "pour-off," as the only
drainage outlet in the Basin is called, was named for Amon G. Carter, a Fort
Worth newspaper publisher who lent his influence and enthusiasm to the drive
to establish the park.  Across the Window from Carter Peak is Vernon Bailey
Peak, named after a pioneer field naturalist of the 1920's.  Finally, Pulliam
Peak is named for Bill Pulliam, who had a ranch at its foot for years.

     The view from the Chisos Basin includes other well-known features that
have legends associated with them.  Not far from Alsate's Face, in Green
Gulch, is Lost Mine Peak.  Supposedly the Spaniards stationed at Presidio San
Vicente worked a mine in the mountains.  An old trail leading from the
presidio up Juniper Canyon encourages those who would believe the story - and
has misled literally hundreds of treasure hunters - but the trail does not
lead up the peak.  At least, if it did, the way has now been lost.  The mouth
of the mine could be found, according to the legend, only by standing at the
door of the old presidio on Easter morning and marking the spot where the
first rays of the sun strike the Chisos.  There is no record that a mine ever
existed in this part of the country, but if there were one, Maxwell has
discredited this method of finding it.  The sun's rays strike the mountains at
slightly different angles each year, because Easter does not fall on the same
day each year.  Anyway, if the sky is clear, sunlight will strike Emory Peak
first because it is the highest point in the mountains.  Near Lost Mine Peak
is the Watchman's House.  According to the same legend, the ghost of an Indian
slave, left there by the Spaniards to guard the mine, lives in a small cave on
the slopes of the peak.

     The Chisos Basin has long been the most hospitable region.  For years it
was the home or hideout of Indians and badmen.  Later the Civilian
Conservation Corps established a camp there, followed by the headquarters of
the national park.  When the park's headquarters was moved to Panther
Junction, the cabins, restaurant, and motel facilities for the park remained
in the Basin, surely one of the most beautiful spots in the Big Bend.

     The terrain and climate combine to render the Big Bend formidable to
anyone traveling across it without reliable transportation.  The terrain is
rough, unpredictable, and hazardous.  The desert is unyielding - unless one
knows the secrets of extracting food and water from cacti - and unforgiving of
the slightest error in judgment or conduct.  The history of the Big Bend,
therefore, is the story of man's efforts to overcome the natural obstacles
that work in concert to defeat him.  Before roads were built into the Big Bend
only one race successfully lived there - the Indians.