[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 75 (Thursday, June 15, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1020-E1021]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             THE BACA RANCH

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. TOM UDALL

                             of new mexico

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 15, 2000

  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to bring to 
your attention the beautiful Baca Ranch which lies in my third 
congressional district of New Mexico. I have worked very closely with 
the entire New Mexico congressional delegation: Senator Pete V. 
Domenici, Senator Jeff Bingaman, Heather Wilson, the gentlelady from 
the 1st District, and Representative Joe Skeen of the 2nd District, to 
ensure that the Baca Ranch can become part of our citizens' patrimony. 
It is my hope that very soon this chamber will favorably consider and 
approve the acquisition of the Baca Ranch that all of us in the 
delegation have worked so intently for. I believe that we must preserve 
this natural treasure for the future generations in New Mexico and 
throughout our country.
  New Mexico Magazine is the oldest state magazine in the United 
States. Every month this periodical publishes articles and items of 
interest that touch persons who are interested in or feel affection for 
the Land of Enchantment. The June 2000 issue contains a beautiful 
layout that includes a description and photographs of the Valles 
Caldera by Douglas Preston and photographer Christine Preston. The 
editors of New Mexico Magazine have granted me the honor of inserting 
the text of this article into the Congressional Record so that everyone 
can share in the wonder that is the Baca Ranch.

               [From The New Mexico Magazine, June 2000]

                            Buying the Baca

                          (By Douglas Preston)

       N.M. 4, the main road through the Jemez Mountains, climbs 
     through steep canyons and ponderosa forests for many miles. 
     As it reaches the heart of the mountains, a spectacular vista 
     breaks out: a high meadow of incredible vastness, called the 
     Valle Grande, ribboned with streams and ringed by 11,000-foot 
     peaks. Those who stop to admire the view can't help but 
     notice the barbed wire fence and ``No Trespassing'' signs 
     that indicate this enticing valley and the mountains beyond 
     lie on private property.
       This is the Baca Location No. 1, a 100,000-acre ranch 
     embedded within the Santa Fe National Forest. For more than 
     half a century the federal government has tried to acquire 
     this extraordinary piece of land. Last fall the Forest 
     Service and the family that owns the property, the Dunigans, 
     reached a tentative agreement to transfer the property to the 
     American people for $101 million. All that remains is for 
     Congress to provide the funds. If the deal goes through it 
     will be one of the largest and most important land 
     acquisitions in the American West in decades.
       The Baca Location No. 1--also known as the Baca Land and 
     Cattle Company--encompasses one of the legendary geological 
     landscapes in America, known as the Valles Caldera. The Valle 
     Grande and the mountains and valleys beyond are the remnants 
     of a gigantic crater, called a caldera, formed by an eruption 
     more than a million years ago. Much of what we know about 
     volcanic caldera formation comes from decades of exploration 
     of the Valles Caldera. It is one of the world's most 
     intensively studied geological landscapes.
       An observer standing on the site of Santa Fe 1.2 million 
     years ago, looking westward, would have witnessed the birth 
     of the Valles Caldera in a cataclysm of breathtaking 
     violence. Before the eruption, our observer would have seen a 
     grouping of interlapping volcanic peaks not unlike the Jemez 
     Mountains today, shaped by earlier volcanic activity. 
     (Polvodera and Chicoma Peaks in the Jemez today are remnants 
     of these earlier volcanoes.) Contrary to popular belief, 
     there was never a mountain anywhere near as high as Mt. 
     Everest at the site. The highest peaks in this earlier range 
     were probably about 12,000 feet--the same as the Jemez today.
       The big blowup started out small--some faint earth tremors, 
     the distant sound of thunder and a cauliflower of ash rising 
     into the azure sky. Because the prevailing winds were blowing 
     out of the southeast carrying the ash toward Utah, our Santa 
     Fe observer would have had an excellent view. Over the days 
     and weeks, a nascent volcano gradually built up through fresh 
     eruptions, each bigger than the last. And then the climax 
     came.
       One or more furious explosions hurtled clouds of ash 
     100,000 feet into the atmosphere, where they formed a 
     gigantic mushroom cloud. The sounds of the explosions were so 
     thunderous that they bounced off the upper atmosphere and 
     echoed around the curve of the Earth, to be heard thousands 
     of miles away. Like a firestorm, the eruption sucked air 
     inward, generating gale-force winds of 75 to 100 miles an 
     hour. The cloud created its own weather system. As it rose in 
     the sky, lightning ripped through it, and it began dropping 
     great columns of rain and sooty hail.
       As the magma emptied out from below the Earth's surface, 
     the underground roof of the magma chamber began to collapse. 
     The volcano slumped in, cracking in concentric circles and 
     triggering earthquakes. A gigantic depression formed. The 
     pumice and ash, instead of being shot upward out of a single 
     pipe, now began squirting out of every crack and crevice in 
     the roof of the magma chamber. The eruption became horizontal 
     instead of vertical. Huge avalanches of ash, glowing orange 
     at more than a thousand degrees, raced down the mountainsides 
     at speeds greater than 150 miles an hour, flattening 
     thousands of trees in their path. (The cylindrical holes left 
     by these trees would be found much later by geologists.)
       When these superheated avalanches hit the Rio Grande, they 
     vaporized the river with a fantastic roar. The ash probably 
     dammed the river, causing it to back up into a lake. When the 
     water finally burst through, devastating flash floods swept 
     downstream. The spreading clouds of ash created darkness so 
     profound that at midday you could not see the hand in front 
     of your face. When the dust finally settled, our observer in 
     Sante Fe would have seen the outline of the Jemez Mountains 
     much as they appear today, minus Redondo Peak. That mountain 
     eerily rose up later, a blister in the earth pushed up by 
     rising magma that never broke out to make a new volcano. The 
     collapse of the magma chamber left a giant crater, or 
     caldera, which soon filled with water to become a crater 
     lake. Over the years, there were flurries of smaller 
     eruptions, and gradually the lake bottom filled with 
     sediments and lava flows to make a gentle floor. The lake 
     eventually broke out and drained. Grass covered the fertile 
     bottomlands, creating the Valle Grande and other vast grass 
     valleys on the ranch, such as the Valle San Antonio and the 
     Valle Toledo. Although the last eruption took place 60,000 
     years ago, the area remains volcanically active. Hot springs 
     and sulfur vents scattered across the Baca attest to the 
     presence of magma not far from the surface, seismic data 
     indicates a large body of magma sits about 6 to 10 miles 
     down. The Jemez will very likely erupt again.
       The Valles Caldera, contrary to popular myth, is not the 
     largest caldera in the world, or even in New Mexico. there is 
     a larger caldera in the Mogollon Mountains, dating back 25 
     million years, and an even larger one in the San Juan 
     Mountains. The Jemez eruption, for all its power, was only 
     fair to middling in size. Geologists estimate the eruption 
     spewed out some 300 cubic kilometers of pumice ash. This was 
     big compared to Mount St. Helens (half a cubic kilometer) and 
     Krakatoa (10 cubic kilometers), but smaller than the Mogollon 
     eruption (1,000 cubic kilometers) or the San Juan (5,000 
     cubic kilometers.) Among geologists, however, the

[[Page E1021]]

     Valles Caldera will always hold a special place.
       Human beings probably first moved into the Jemez Mountains 
     about 12 or 13 thousand years ago. It was richly settled by 
     Pueblo Indians in the 13th and 14th centuries, and some of 
     the largest pueblo ruins in the country can be found there. 
     But by the time the Spanish arrived the Pueblo Indians had 
     largely abandoned the mountains, except for seasonal hunting, 
     to build their pueblos along the Rio Grande. The land passed 
     from Mexican to American ownership through the Treaty of 
     Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.
       Baca Location No. 1 was carved out of public land in 1860, 
     to settle a land claim by the Cabeza de Vaca family. 
     Comanches had run the Cabeza de Vacas off their gigantic Las 
     Vegas land grant, and the Mexican government subsequently 
     regranted the land to others. But the American courts found 
     the original grant legal, and to settle it the Baca heirs 
     were given the right to choose an equivalent amount of land 
     elsewhere in the Southwest. No fools, their first choice was 
     the Valles Caldera, hence the name Baca Location No. 1. 
     (There is a Baca Location No. 2 in eastern New Mexico and 
     other Baca locations in Colorado and Arizona.) The first 
     survey indicated the Baca Location No. 1 comprised 99,289 
     acres.
       While the rest of the Jemez remained public, this vast in-
     holding changed hands several times in the late 19th and 
     early 20th century. In 1962, a young Texas oilman and 
     entrepreneur from Abilene, James P. (``Pat'') Dunigan, heard 
     about the ranch and snapped it up for $2.5 million, out from 
     under the nose of the federal government, which had been 
     trying to buy it from the previous owner. Dunigan was 
     primarily interested in the Baca's potential for geothermal 
     energy extraction and cattle grazing.
       The Dunigan family spent every summer thereafter on the 
     ranch, riding, working cattle, camping and going on field 
     trips with environmental and geological organizations. 
     According to his son,
       As a result, Dunigan made many changes that greatly 
     improved the health of the land. He undertook a long and 
     expensive lawsuit against the New Mexico Timber Company to 
     terminate its logging of the Baca, which had scarred many 
     hillsides with roads and clear-cuts. He halted serious 
     overgrazing by reducing the cattle load from 12,000 to 5,000 
     head. He also successfully fought the Public Service Company 
     of New Mexico's ill-advised OLE plan to run high-tension 
     transmission lines through the Jemez, which would have cut 
     through the Cerro Toledo highlands, one of the most remote 
     and beautiful parts of the ranch. A prescribed burn program 
     helped maintain the balance between grasslands and forests.
       Dunigan's efforts created, among other things, a superb 
     habitat for elk. In mid-century, 107 elk from Jackson Hole 
     and Yellowstone had been introduced in the Jemez Mountains. 
     The elk population grew rapidly. It stands at 8,000 today, 
     many of which summer on the Baca's 30,000 acres of 
     grasslands.
       According to his family, Dunigan often expressed his hope 
     that the land would end up going to the American people. In 
     late 1978 he began discussing the sale of the ranch to the 
     federal government, but the negotiations ended when Dunigan 
     unexpectedly died in 1980. The Dunigan family reopened 
     discussions with the government in 1997, but they fell apart 
     in early 1999 over issues of confidentiality.
       ``But there was a realization on everyone's part,'' says 
     Andrew, ``that we had come a long way and that this was such 
     an important thing that it was worth putting aside our 
     differences.'' This they did, and the Dunigan family and the 
     government agreed on a price. Final negotiations are in 
     progress, and Congress has made steps to appropriate the 
     funding. The Baca acquisition enjoys strong support from 
     almost every organization in the state concerned with land 
     issues, from the Northern New Mexico Stockmen's Association 
     to the Sierra Club. It has the backing of the New Mexico 
     Congressional delegation from both parties, as well as the 
     Clinton administration. Most importantly, it has the strong 
     support of the people of northern New Mexico. This time 
     around, it seems likely that the deal will go through.
       The Baca is a magical place, one of the most extensive 
     high-mountain grasslands in the United States. It is a land 
     of deep fir forests shrouded in morning mists; of sweeping 
     meadows dotted with elk and mule deer; of aspen groves that 
     turn the hillsides gold in the fall; of high mountains 
     echoing with the whistling cry of bald eagles; of clear 
     streams alive with jostling trout. Mountain lions, bobcats, 
     pine martens and black bears prowl its mountain slopes. It 
     hosts a number of rare species, including one found only in 
     the area, the Jemez Mountains salamander. It is also a land 
     of hot springs, obsidian beds, Indian ruins and historic 
     buildings--including several decaying movie sets.
       The conversion of the Baca to public ownership will involve 
     an experiment unique in the history of public land 
     management. The Baca will become a trust wholly owned by the 
     federal government, called the Valles Caldera Trust. It will 
     remain a working cattle ranch, so far as that is consistent 
     with the preservation of wildlife, scenery and recreation. 
     Within 15 years it is supposed to become self-sufficient 
     financially. The exact details will be worked out by a board 
     of trustees drawn from groups that normally hate each other: 
     ranchers, conservationists, National Park and Forest Service 
     employees, financial experts, game and fish managers, 
     archaeologists, biologists and commodity industry 
     representatives.
       Denise McCaig, the Baca acquisition coordinator for the 
     Forest Service who was instrumental in seeing the deal 
     through, called the arrangement unique and challenging. 
     ``Having representatives from these different interests could 
     be helpful, but it could also create difficulties. If they 
     can come to this working toward a common objective, it will 
     be good. But if they come to the position working from their 
     own self-interest, they will have problems.'' She laughed: 
     ``Oh yeah, it will be an interesting experiment.''
       It has the potential, if it works, of becoming a model for 
     cooperation among normally antagonistic groups concerning 
     other public lands.
       Over the years, many people have looked longingly over the 
     barbed wire fence that separates N.M. 4 from the Valle Grande 
     and wondered when they would ever have a chance to explore 
     this splendid country. Even after the land goes into public 
     ownership, it will be two years at least before the details 
     of access and use can be worked out by the trustees. When 
     that happens, this magical landscape, born in fire and 
     violence, will finally be opened to the American public.

     

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