On the Road in New Mexico: Valles Caldera National Preserve

My friend Kim and I decided we simply had to get out of the village. Even when living in a place as beautiful as Truchas—where so many people come to vacation—it is vital to step away and connect with the broader world. That is exactly what we did. Our destination was the Valles Caldera National Preserve, situated about 45 minutes from Truchas in the Jemez Mountains.

For those unfamiliar with the Preserve, I highly recommend the book Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico’s National Preserve, co-authored by William deBuys and Don Usner. DeBuys perfectly captures the sudden grandeur of arriving there.

“If you drive, say, from Los Alamos, New Mexico, to Jemez Springs, you will cross a high mountain ridge, which is the rim of the caldera, after which you briefly descend through forest. Then suddenly, rounding a long, sweeping bend, the forest ends and the space before you bursts outward into a giant, grass-carpeted mountain bowl… So abrupt is the change, so unexpected the sudden abundance of space and light and visual detail, that you are left wordless… A seemingly misplaced prairie lies before you, a tawny sea of grass miles deep and broad, which has been dropped into the top of a heavily forested mountain range. This stunning grassland bowl is the Valle Grande.”

It is precisely where Kim and I ended up. We parked near the very lookout point deBuys references, found a trailhead Kim knew, and took off hiking. Because Kim hadn’t visited since the region’s last major wildfire, he was deeply shocked by the surrounding devastation. Having never seen the forest in its lush, thriving state, I experienced it differently, finding a stark beauty in the charred, straight trees rising toward the sky. They etched vertical black lines across the panorama of the Caldera—much like the lines that cut through many of my own paintings. I was captivated.

Then, an amazing thing happened. Because the fire had consumed the ground cover, leaving only a bare, charred floor, I started to notice glistening black rock everywhere I looked. It resembled broken glass littering the ground, and in a way, that is exactly what it was. I realized I was standing in the middle of a rich deposit of obsidian, a material prized by ancestral peoples for crafting arrowheads and sharp tools. I have since learned that large obsidian flows run throughout the Valles Caldera; I was standing on an ancient flow of black glass exposed by the fire.

Human connection to this landscape runs incredibly deep. Artifacts found within the caldera have been carbon-dated to 11,000 years ago, proving its use dates back to prehistoric times. Oral histories record that the area drew the ancestors of the Jemez, Zia, Santa Clara, and San Ildefonso pueblos who, as deBuys notes, “… from the start, recognized within the caldera some of their holiest places.” They traveled here for spiritual reasons, for hunting, and to gather its valuable resources.

Geologically, the Valles Caldera is a massive, circular volcanic basin more than 12 miles across, formed by the collapse of land following a series of cataclysmic eruptions about one million years ago. Today, it encompasses an 89,000-acre National Preserve. The Valle Grande is just one of its many valles—a Spanish term that here connotes wide, open spaces rather than a strict “valley.” The caldera is comprised of several of these open expanses, each separated by internal mountains and bearing its own name, with the Valle Grande being the largest.

The land also has a turbulent modern history of shifting borders and ownership. For generations, Spanish, Mexican, and tribal herders (including the Navajo) converged here for seasonal grazing, a coexistence marked by frequent raids and clashes. The region changed forever when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo integrated New Mexico into the United States, transforming the caldera into a battleground for the U.S. Army’s Indian Wars, as well as an engine for commercial logging and ranching.

A major turning point occurred in 1876 when the land became the Baca Ranch, granted to a prominent family as compensation for a lost land grant near Las Vegas, New Mexico. In the decades that followed, the property passed through a long chain of private and corporate hands:

• The 1930s (Frank Bond): A businessman based in nearby Española, Bond ran up to 30,000 sheep in the caldera. This significantly overgrazed the land, causing watershed damage from which the ecosystem is still recovering.
• 1963 (The Dunigan Family): Purchased by the Dunigans of Abilene, Texas. Because they did not initially own the timber rights, the New Mexico Lumber Company logged the property heavily, scarring the landscape with roads and removing vast amounts of old-growth Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine.
• The 1970s: Pat Dunigan successfully bought out the timber rights, finally slowing the commercial logging.

The modern era of conservation arrived on July 25, 2000, when the Valles Caldera Preservation Act officially created the Valles Caldera National Preserve within the Santa Fe National Forest. The long-awaited victory to reclaim and protect this land resulted in a unique model of public land management. Today, the Preserve balances diverse and complex interests, including forestry, ranching, wildlife conservation, financial management, and the preservation of the region’s rich cultural history.

It is no small task. Yet, because generations of people fought hard for this remarkably wealthy corner of New Mexico, I was able to hike in peaceful solitude, experiencing the boundless abundance this land continues to offer. DeBuys summarizes the feeling perfectly:

“What lingers from the experience is the sense of the land’s animation and abundance… and the sense of that abundance flowing across the land as a kind of living and breathing tissue, a cloak upon the land that was as tangible as the land itself and yet also ethereal, like a spirit of the night. It was as though we had peeked behind the screen of our own senses and glimpsed a dimension of the caldera that human eyes are rarely privileged to see… The land seems inviting. The invitation casts a spell.”

Love to you all,

Jeane

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