AUSTIN — Most Texans probably were unaware of the Christmas Mountains when Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson elevated the profile of the state-owned land last year.

The combination of desert and rugged, 9,270-acre mountain range sits 12 miles northeast of Terlingua, with one mile of the property sharing a boundary with Big Bend National Park.

"There's one particular spot (on top of the mountain) that has an absolutely beautiful view of the Chisos, the desert, the Rio Grande and Mexico," says Alida Lorio, general manager of the nearby Terlingua Property Owners Association.

How did this rugged land protruding up from the Chihuahuan desert floor inherit the "Christmas" name?

Local folklore has it that an area ranch family decided to spend the Thanksgiving holidays camping in the mountains and got smacked by a freak blizzard that prevented the family from escaping until Christmas.

Of course, Lorio concedes: "It sounds like a legend to me."

In 1958, Big Bend residents Virginia Madison and Hallie Stillwell co-authored How Come it's Called That?, which attempts to explain the origin of places, stories and names for the region's landmarks.

They offer two versions for the name given the mountain range: From a distance their numerous pointed peaks look very much like a growth of Christmas trees. The other version describes a family that went into the mountains to camp for the summer and didn't emerge until Christmas.

Patterson's staff says there is no definitive answer to how they got their name.

The property officially shows up as "Christmas Mountains" in the 1918 Corps of Engineers U.S. Army topographic map and also on the 1904 University of Texas Mineral Survey Map completed by Hill and Udden, according to General Land Office officials.

The land commissioner believes "the family story sounds more plausible than the Christmas trees from a distance story." Christmas trees weren't even introduced to Texas until the middle 1800s, and they didn't become common until the 1920s, he said.

Patterson put the Christmas Mountains in the news last year when he tried to sell the land to private bidders. Currently, talks are ongoing with the National Park Service, although Patterson's insistence that guns and hunting be allowed makes a resolution iffy.