A Forgotten Corner

  Forty miles south of Hobbs is the town of Jal. Jal is located in the far southeast corner of
New Mexico. If one were to start at the principal intersection in Jal, which is State Highway 18 and Kansas Avenue, and drive east, it is only 7 1/2 miles to the Texas border. If one were to drive south from this point, it is only 9.1 miles to the Texas border. From the Jal city limits, it is only
6 1/2 miles, in both directions, to the Texas border.
  Even though Jal sits at a fairly lofty elevation of 3,030 feet above sea level, it is the lowest town in New Mexico in elevation. It is not the lowest point in New Mexico, but it is the lowest town. The lowest point is farther west, south of Carlsbad, on the shore of Red Bluff Lake at the Texas border. The elevation at that point is 2,817 feet above sea level. So, as you can see, New Mexico is a very lofty state when it comes to elevation when the lowest town in the state is more than 3,000 feet above sea level. The only two states with higher average elevations than New Mexico are Colorado and Wyoming and the average elevation in Wyoming is only about 50 feet higher than the average elevation in New Mexico.
  There is some debate over how Jal got its name. It is someone's initials, but whose? More importantly, JAL was a well known cattle brand before the town even existed. One candidate for the town's name is John A. Lynch. No one seems to know his middle name, just the initial. He spent some time in this area in the 1800s, but he then moved on so I doubt that he knew about the existence of the town that sprang up on the spot that bore his initials. John A. Lynch does not seem like he had much, if anything, to do with the establishment of the town or the cattle brand.
  The next candidate is John Albert Lawrence. He settled in this area and started a small cattle ranch. He seems to be the one who started the JAL cattle brand and, in 1881, he sold the brand to the Cowden Cattle Company. Interestingly, the three Cowden brothers were names James, Amos and Liddon. There's those JAL initials again. The Cowden Brothers established their ranch headquarters along Monument Draw, a dry stream channel that runs five miles east of the current townsite of Jal. They continued using the JAL cattle brand and, it is claimed, they registered the brand in 1897. However, there seems to be some problems with this account also. The town is named for the cattle brand and I believe John Albert Lawrence or the Cowden Brothers are the most likely sources of the town's unusual name. Evidently, historians have not been able to pinpoint the exact origin of the town's name.
  The name is phonetic. Some people pronounce it "JAIL" or "JALL." Or, since it is in
New Mexico, many people assume that the "J" has an "H" sound, as is the case in Spanish words, so they pronounce the town's name "HALL" or "HAL." Interesting how a name that only has 3 letters in it gets mispronounced by so many people.