Valles Caldera National Preserve ⓘ

Valles Caldera National Preserve has the honor of protecting and interpreting the resources, stories, and voices that represent at least 12,000 years of human history and influence on this landscape.

Valles Caldera is of spiritual and ceremonial importance to numerous Native American peoples in the greater Southwest region. These cultural connections are both contemporary and of great antiquity, and the National Park Service respectfully seeks to uphold the values and prioritize the voices of the Tribes and Pueblos for whom this special place continues to be part of their practices, beliefs, identity, and history:

For most of the 12,000-year human history at Valles Caldera, people have interacted with this landscape in a nomadic and sustainable way. Before the adoption of agriculture, people lived in seasonal camps and villages as they moved across large territories in pursuit of food and favorable living conditions. Several small villages within Valles Caldera would have buzzed with activity during the summers as villagers spent their days hunting, fishing, foraging, and fashioning obsidian tools. They would move on to warmer climates during the long winter season, allowing seasonal periods of rest for the landscape.

Starting around the 600s AD, people began practicing agriculture in the Jemez Mountains, leading to more permanent settlements called pueblos. The word “pueblo” can refer to a community of people (spelled with a capital “P”) or to the masonry structures that they built and occupied (lowercase “p”). Pueblos were often situated on flat mesa tops or near waterways that drained down from the mountains. Occupants farmed corn, beans, squash, and other crops to supplement their diets and sustain their communities. They continued hunting game and gathering plants for food, medicine, and ceremony. Pueblo runners traveled to and from Valles Caldera along traditional routes to procure important resources that only the mountains could provide. Every part of the Valles Caldera landscape was considered sacred, and it was treated as such. Many descendant Pueblo communities continue these traditional lifeways today.

Spanish settlers began arriving in the 1500s, bringing sheep and other livestock to the montane grasslands of the Jemez Mountains. Sheepherding quickly became one of the primary uses of this landscape. We know very little about the Hispanic sheepherders who used this land, but most of what we do know comes from carvings they left on the trunks of aspen trees. These historic carvings are called dendroglyphs, and more than 3,000 of them have been documented by volunteers and historians at Valles Caldera National Preserve. By matching the names, dates, and towns from these dendroglyphs to U.S. census records, we can begin piecing together and preserving the histories of people who have otherwise been excluded from the historical record of this landscape. The surnames of Martinez, Lujan, Trujillo, and Sanchez make up about one-third of all glyphs containing family names at Valles Caldera. Learn more in this StoryMap!

Valles Caldera also chronicles the history of New Mexico’s enchantment and exploitation—from 19th century land use after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and sheep grazing under the partido system to subsequent cattle grazing, timber harvesting, and geothermal exploration. Beginning as a land grant in 1860, private ownership was held by a series of four families.

A decades-long legal battle over rights to a 500,000-acre Spanish land grant near Las Vegas, New Mexico, was resolved when the heirs of Luis Maria Cabeza de Baca offered to give up their claim to the land, provided they get an equivalent amount of land elsewhere. On June 21, 1860, the U.S. Congress authorized the heirs to select 5 equal-sized vacant tracts in the Territory of New Mexico. Their first choice was a 100,000-acre tract in the Jemez Mountains that became known as Baca Location No. 1. For the nearly 40 years that the Cabeza de Baca heirs owned the property, the lands were used primarily for sheep grazing.

In 1875, Tomás Dolores (one of 40+ Cabeza de Baca heirs) mortgaged his claimed interest in the Baca Location to José Leandro Perea for $10,000. In 1890, Perea passed away, and his son-in-law, Mariano Otero, inherited his interest in the land grant. Otero and his uncle, Miguel Antonio Otero, had spent the past decade planning a commercial resort in nearby Jemez Springs, and this inheritance offered the possibility of expansion in the future. Mariano Otero and his son, Frederico (F.J.), immediately began buying additional interests in the Baca Location from other Baca heirs until finally, in 1899, Mariano Otero purchased the entire property. The Valles Land Company, overseen by F.J. Otero, used the Baca Location as summer range for large numbers of livestock. Mariano Otero also explored ventures in sulphur mining and tourism at Sulphur Springs on the land grant's western boundary. When Mariano Otero died in 1904, F.J. took over full responsibility of the family's business interests. The timber industry began putting pressure on F.J. to sell Baca Location No. 1 due to the incredible value of the tract's timber holdings. In 1909, he sold Baca Location No. 1 to the Redondo Development Company and leased back the grazing rights. By 1917, F.J. decided not to renew his grazing lease, so the Redondo Development Company leased the property’s grazing rights to Frank Bond, who would extend his family’s partido sheep business into the Baca Location.

Redondo Development Company contracted with Frank Bond and his brother George W. Bond for the sale of the Baca Location in 1917, excepting and reserving all of the tract's timber and one half of its mineral resources for a period of 99 years. The Bond brothers expanded sheep grazing on the property through the partido system, which employed and exploited poor Hispanic workers from nearby communities like Cuba, Española, and San Ysidro. Learn more in the callout box above titled "Exploitation of Hispanic Workers: The Partido System." In 1935, the New Mexico Timber Company began logging operations on Baca Location No. 1, establishing the Redondo Logging Camp in Redondo Meadows for 25 employees and their families. By the end of the decade, the northwestern corner of the property was the center of logging activity. When Frank Bond died in 1945, his son, Franklin, took over the family business and began leasing grazing rights for the Baca Location. Synthetic fibers had been developed and popularized during World War II, so wool was no longer in high demand. Sheep grazing was gradually phased out and replaced by cattle ranching on the Baca Location. Franklin hired employees to work the ranch, thereby ending the partido system. He built several log cabins to house seasonal ranch workers and their families. When he died in 1954, his widow, Ethel, took over the family business. She leased the grazing rights to Sam King and removed all remaining Bond livestock from the property. In 1959, she built her "dream home" alongside Indios Creek near the property's northeastern corner. By the end of the Bond family's ownership of Baca Location No. 1 in 1963, logging operations had cut more than 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) of timber from the property.

James Patrick Dunigan of the Dunigan Tool & Supply Company purchased the Baca Location in January of 1963 and established the Baca Land and Cattle Company. Despite his investors' wishes for the new acquisition, Dunigan was committed to maintaining a working cattle ranch and preserving the beauty of the landscape. He immediately sought to end the damaging logging practices that had decimated the property's forests since the 1930s, so in 1964, he sued the New Mexico Timber Company. Persistence paid off, as he was able to buy back the timber rights in 1971 and halt unsustainable logging practices forevermore. In addition to maintaining a working ranch, Dunigan believed that this beautiful property had great tourism potential. He pursued other ventures like geothermal energy, movie filming, raising thoroughbred horses, and guided fishing and elk hunting excursions. Dunigan had always been sympathetic to the idea of the preservation of the Baca Location, and he listed Valles Caldera as a National Natural Landmark (NNL) with the National Park Service in 1975. After Dunigan died in 1980, negotiations for the Federal acquisition of the Baca Location were shelved until the early 1990s. The Federal Government undertook lengthy negotiations with the Dunigan companies and eventually acquired the Baca Location in 2000, establishing Valles Caldera National Preserve.

Valles Caldera National Preserve was established on July 25, 2000, as an unprecedented national experiment in public land management through the creation of the Valles Caldera Trust. The Valles Caldera Trust was a wholly-owned government corporation overseen by a board of trustees appointed by the president of the United States. Through the Valles Caldera Trust, the U.S. Congress sought to evaluate the efficiency, economy, and effectiveness of decentralized public land management and ecosystem restoration. This 15-year experiment in public land management continues to contribute to the national dialogue on the role of protected areas for long-term economic and environmental sustainability along with innovative approaches to place-based and science-based adaptive management.

On December 19, 2014, Valles Caldera National Preserve was designated as a unit of the national park system. After a brief transition period, the National Park Service assumed management of the preserve on October 1, 2015.

As you explore the park, consider your place in the rich legacy of human travel to and through this landscape. The roads and trails you will follow here are likely the same routes that people have been using for thousands of years—from indigenous hunter-gatherers searching for obsidian sources to ancestral peoples procuring medicinal plants, Hispanic sheepherders leading their flocks to greener pastures, and American cowboys riding on horseback to secure the ranch perimeter. To get involved in the park's future, please consider Working With Us , Volunteering , or submitting input for Park Planning projects.

Located in the Jemez Mountains of north central New Mexico, Valles Caldera National Preserve protects, preserves, and restores ecosystems and cultural landscapes within an outstanding example of a volcanic caldera for the purpose of education, scientific research, public enjoyment and use, and cultural continuity. The juxtaposition of large grassland meadows, or valles in Spanish, surrounded by rounded forest-covered volcanic domes provides the distinctive natural landscape that led to the name of Valles Caldera. The high-elevation ecosystems, ranging from 8,000 to 11,254 feet high, combine abundant rainfall, mixed-conifer forests, and deep, rich soils to support a great diversity of animals, plants, fungi, and other organisms including herds of several thousand elk and healthy populations of mountain lions, bears, and coyotes.

With miles of meandering headwaters streams, Valles Caldera is an important watershed protection area.

The preserve offers a landscape in which to explore the dynamics of high-elevation ecosystem stability and resilience in the context of changing climate conditions. Although the natural beauty of the caldera has persisted, the land-use practices of the 19th and 20th centuries, including overgrazing, clear-cut logging, and road building, have left a legacy of unhealthy forests, riparian damage, degraded wetlands, and reduced stream function. Numerous wildlife species were extirpated from the area as well. Today’s approach to ecological restoration builds on the lessons learned from this history and seeks to regain balance between human uses and natural processes. The preserve is an ecosystem in recovery. Major wildfires in 2011 and 2013 burned 60% of the preserve, and today the contrast in recently burned areas between old-growth forest and dense, second-growth forests provides a compelling demonstration of the value of landscape restoration to promote biotic integrity and biodiversity, while improving watershed function and reducing the potential for future catastrophic wildfires.

Left image Sheep grazing on Jaramillo Creek, 1935 Credit: T. Harmon Parkhurst. Photo from the Museum of New Mexico, Image # 51457.

Right image Recovering wetland beside Jaramillo Creek, 2001. Credit: Steve Tharnstrom and John Hogan; photo from USGS Jemez Mountains Field Station, Image # JMFS 306 BAC retake color MNM51457.

Valles Caldera National Preserve's elevation range between 8,000 and 11,254 feet fosters a diversity of plant communities. This topographic mosaic of expansive valley meadows, lush forested volcanic domes, riparian wetlands, and old growth Ponderosa pine groves are in striking contrast to the arid New Mexico landscapes at lower elevations.

Riparian wetlands at Valles Caldera include the marshy meadows, fens, bogs, vernal pools, springs, and seeps that occur in the large, open, low-gradient landscape areas. About 8% of Valles Caldera's land area can be classified as wetlands. A variety of sedges ( Carex spp.), cinquefoil ( Potentilla spp.), rushes ( Juncus and Eleocharis spp.), and longleaf pondweed ( Potamogeton nodosis ) comprise Valles Caldera's wet meadows. According to Muldavin and Tonne (2003), the edges of the intermittent and perennial streams at Valles Caldera support a diverse layer of over 40 grasses and forbs, most of which are aquatic plants. The most common ones are Canada reedgrass ( Calamagrostis canadensis ), Fendler's waterleaf ( Hydrophyllum fendleri ), seep monkeyflower ( Mimulus guttatus ), Columbian monkshood ( Aconitum columbianum ), and Fendler's cowbane ( Oxypolis fendleri ).

Montane grasslands or meadows contain predominantly grass and grass-like species. Trees are usually absent or rare. However, montane grasslands are vulnerable to encroachment of trees due to changing climate, historic grazing practices, and the absence of low-severity and frequent fires. Montane grasslands will often burst with wildflowers during the warmer months when sunshine and rainfall are abundant. At Valles Caldera, the greatest variety of wildflowers can be found in July and August. Approximately 22% of Valles Caldera is classified as lower elevation montane grassland. Upland bunch grasses dominate, but scattered stands of trees or shrubs are present where disturbances have occurred or where a low fire incidence exists.

Montane forests of the American Southwest are generally divided into four forest types based on the dominant tree species. With increasing elevation, they include three coniferous forests: ponderosa pine forest, mixed conifer forest, and spruce-fir forest. The fourth forest type is quaking aspen forest, a deciduous forest that grows in areas of past disturbance, primarily at the elevation of mixed conifer forest. Valles Caldera National Preserve contains all four montane forest types with the following percentages of land area covered:

The mid-elevation mixed conifer forests occupy the largest area of Valles Caldera and include dry and moist mesic forests and woodlands, as well as blue spruce ( Picea pungens ) stands that occur along the fringes on north aspects of mountain slopes. The ponderosa pine ( Pinus ponderosa ) forests, which are between the mixed conifer forests and upper montane grasslands, occupy the forest zone’s lower elevations. Learn more: Montane Forest Vegetation in the Southwest (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

Felsenmeer rock fields are exposed rock outcrops or scree fields that make up only about 1% of Valles Caldera National Preserve's land area. A felsenmeer is a unique environment characterized more by rocks than by plants. Growing conditions for plants are harsh because the poorly developed soils don’t hold much water. This community provides some of the best habitat at Valles Caldera for the American pika ( Ochotona princeps ), a cute, but climate-sensitive, mammal.

The high-elevation ecosystems of Valles Caldera National Preserve, ranging from 8,000 to 11,254 feet high, combine abundant rainfall, mixed-conifer forests, and deep, rich soils to support a great diversity of wildlife including several thousand elk and healthy populations of mountain lions, bears, bobcats, and coyotes. Valles Caldera is home to 3 threatened and endangered animal species:

Additionally, at least 40 bird species of conservation concern are known to occupy Valles Caldera. The park's central location within the Jemez Mountains provides landscape connectivity among a mosaic of protected lands like Bandelier National Monument and the Santa Fe National Forest. This ensures that wildlife corridors and habitat are preserved across manmade boundary lines for holistic ecosystem protection and function.

Wildlife viewing at Valles Caldera is a highly memorable experience. While elk are the most popular animal to observe in the park, visitors may also delight in witnessing the shenanigans of a Gunnison's prairie dog colony, the intense concentration of a coyote on the hunt, and the symphony of birdsong on an early-morning hike. Please remember to maintain a safe and respectful distance when watching wildlife. If their behavior changes because of your presence, you're too close! Valles Caldera National Preserve is one of the American Southwest's premier wildlife viewing destinations. Learn more on our Wildlife Observing page.