Luna Jacal
a.k.a. Luna Residence;BBH 168
At base of Pena Mountain in Big Bend National Park, Big Bend National Park, TX"Gilberto Luna was a pioneer Mexican farmer in the Big Bend country who settled in the Alamo Creek drainage, living there all his long life and raising a very large family. He died in 1947 at the age of 109. 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. That he succeeded for nearly a century in farming the dry Alamo Creek drainage using the technique of flood-plain farming is only slightly less amazing.
"The Luna Residence is significant as the prime example within the Park of the primitive Mexican house-shelter typical of earliest pioneer settlement."
It is also considered to be a prime example of man's adaptation to the environment in the Big Bend National Park.
Additionally, Luna was a widely known personage in the area, "a legend in his own time."
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.