[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.
____________________