Why Leones is the name?
To find out the reasons for the denomination of Leones, has been reason for investigations of several historians and Argentine writers.
Luis Roberto Altamira, a prestigious student of the past Cordoba, said in opportunity of being consulted: “The name of Leones occurred to the population, because the fatigue details who extended the railway lines of the Argentine Central company were attacked in several opportunities, in times of the night by hungry American lions. That filled of stupor to the workers.”
But he himself Altamira admits that the version is not coherent, since the presence of the American lions were not common, also known like puma in the zone.
In 1942, the administration of the Argentine Central Railroad to requirement of neighbors, it by the end of responds that the railway authorities gave the name of Lions to this population in memory “to the combat of the Gorge of the Lions against the natives, October of 1857, in the environs of Melincué.
Colonel Emilio Mitre beat to the Coliqueo Cacique in the mentioned place…” On the other hand Emma Isabel Hernandez de Ayala says us that in 1840 a denominated slug existed “the Lions” that Serbian from rest or refuge to the travellers who turned aside themselves of the Camino Real.
In a note appeared in the newspaper the Press in Julio of 1972, Mrs. Hernandez de Ayala tells that a mayoral of diligences narrated that there by the 1835, “troops of carts who went to originating Rosary of Tucumán were noticed before arriving at the Saladillo of an imminent attack of the savages. Hidden in the proximities of Dead Friar. Deflection its route moving away of the Camino Real, and internal in the level one, to sud, where it discovered a tapera inhabited by an old Creole.”
This man, Don Leon, had constructed his life in is place, and like all gaucho he was astute, and he had protected his tapera behind an enormous lagoon, having constructed a trench that prevented the advance of malones.
With the help of Don Leon and its children, the carts were hidden surrounding and farm, hoping therefore the arrival of the Indians.
The fight took place and was bloody. Don Leon, observing that the direction of the wind favored it, crossed to I swim the lagoon with one of its children and set fire to the parched pajonales, obtaining that the natives, seeing the great blazes fled. By this episode, the place was known like “the tapera of the lions”.
Almost two decades later, in February of 1875 a company of transport of passengers called “Argentina Mail” I take advantage of this route, to shorten distances and to gain time in the passages between Rosario and Cordova. In the place of the legend the Slug of the Lions settled down, and on that route North American engineer Allam Campbell projected to the future raise the routes of railroad that would unite Cordova with Rosary. Sarmiento in its inaugural tour, took like reference the legend “the Slug from the Lions”, that was conserved to two blocks of the flaming station and it gave name him to the shutdown: Lions.
Created by Melanie Blejter y Gaston Dachowker
