Sul Ross State University - Brand Yearbook (Alpine, TX)

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Lime-Stone Cliff at Comanche Springs M C OMANCHE Springs, not more than three miles from the quaint, sleepy little village of Lajitas, must have been the camping grounds of Indians from time immemorial. One can only conjecture how long ago its first camp fires were built. The great kitchen midden mound, 01 ash bank, found there is strong evidence that it has been hundreds of years since the spot became a customary camp ground. The mound is approximately twenty by fifty feet, the midden ranging from two to three feet in depth. Several metates have been found at Comanche Springs, and many scraps of paintings on the rocks still remain, but the best ones have been worn dim by the elements, and damaged by souvenir collectors. There are no natural shelters or caves in the vicinity, but a lime-stone rock room, more properly known as a slab house, is built against the cliff. All the year round Comanche Springs furnishes water, not now to Indians as in the past, but to the herds of cattle and goats that graze around its borders.

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C HALK Draw winds its way for many miles south of Santiago Peak, a well-known summit of Santi¬ ago Mountains in Brewster County. Cut into the sides of this draw are numerous small canyons. The walls of one of these canyons along the west side rise abruptly to a height of approximately two hundred and fifty feet. Along the sides of the canyon are in¬ accessible rock ledges, one of which is perhaps four hundred feet long. On the south side near the mouth of the canyon is a rock shelter, interesting because of its evidence of Indian occupation — arrowheads, metates, and a pestle within its mortar, just as the Indians left it. This cave must have proved an ex¬ cellent camping place for Indian braves on the war¬ path because of the fact that it is near permanent water—a tenaja, or huge well, measuring one hun¬ dred and twenty-five feet by seventy feet, cut in the rock at the head of the canyon.