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El Santuario de Chimayó, New Mexico Built in 1813, adobe construction |
Branded the ‘Lourdes of America’, El Santuario de Chimayó is a calm place of pilgrimage and reported healings, which attracts crowds of faithful (300,000/year) from everywhere. It is regarded as one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world. Yet, it is mostly unknown to Americans.
Unique to this shrine are its miraculous healing powers coming from Holy Dirt rather than the more common holy water from a well or a spring. Even though it is known in Spanish as ‘tierra bendita’ or ‘blessed earth’, it is referred to ‘holy dirt’ in English.
Consequently, the main attraction here is El Posito, a pit from which dirt is taken and from which miraculous cures have been credited.
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Not permitted to take pictures inside. |
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Beautifully painted altar and chancel Christ of Esquipulas on the green cross |
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On my trip to Spain in 2018, I spent some time in Compostela ‘El Camino de Santiago’ pilgrimage ends there Scalloped shells adorn buildings as they did in Compostela Shells could be used as bowl for water or food, a perfect pairing with long journeys The one seen above also contains sandals, the meaning of which I’m unsure. Shells are a recognized sign of pilgrimages. |
El Santuario’s past includes stories of miraculous recoveries that began shortly after construction of the chapel. Native Americans attributed healing powers to the surrounding lands long before that. Many of today’s pilgrims travel to Chimayó with hopes of receiving relief from physical and spiritual maladies.
Pueblo Indians have occupied the Chimayó area since the 12th century, a long time prior to the initial Spanish conquest of New Mexico. The Tewa Indians named Chimayó as ‘Tsi-Mayoh’, after one of four sacred hills above the valley that mark the four cardinal directions. Tsi-Mayoh lies directly behind the Santuario.
The Pueblo Indians believed that they shared their land with supernatural beings. The natives thought the healing spirits were to be found in the form of hot springs, which ultimately dried up leaving behind healing mud, then dry clay/dirt. The Pueblo and Tewa used the site of El Santuario de Chimayó for healing way before Spanish occupation.
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Very green near the church but otherwise quite dry Tsi-Mayoh in background |
El Santuario de Chimayó is a small adobe church with twin front towers topped with belfries, crumbling wooden doors, an enclosed garden, and an arched gate with a cross on top. The interior is a colorful mixture of Spanish and Indian decorations and styles. The nave of the church is decorated with original examples of 19th century Hispanic religious folk art, including several santos and religious frescoes. Behind the altar stands the miraculous statue of Our Lord of Esquipulas. The inspiration of this Lord came from Guatemala where he is a Black Christ who encountered mysterious skin color changes over the centuries.
‘The distinctiveness of the devotion to the Christ of Esquipulas is characterized by its communication of a way of understanding and assuming pain, suffering, and even death, with an attitude contrary to resignation and passivity. The cross on which Jesus is nailed is green to represent that the holy wood is alive, hence, upon approaching we can see the sprouts that have begun to emerge from him. It is a sign that announces that the death of Christ on the cross does not bring more death or condemnation to the world, but life and blessings for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.’
(Chimayó Sanctuary website)
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Stone arches with crosses near the Potrero ditch |
Pilgrims come to realize a vow, and some seek blessings at this church known as a place of healing and miracles. The holy dirt is said to have curative powers and numerous crutches, canes, walkers, notes of thanks, and many other articles, are left inside the prayer room as ‘proof’ that these petitions were answered.
An adjoining room contains photographs of young kids and babies, too young to already have left this world. Some, with items that belonged to the departed such as shoes, clothing, pacifiers, flowers, etc. Walls and now the ceiling, since the walls are filled, are covered with these objects.
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Two New Mexico treasures Our Lady of Guadalupe and Red Chile Peppers |
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At top of Capilla del Santo Niño de Atocha Holy Child of Atocha Chapel built 1857 |
Those who returned talked about how they attributed their survival to their faith, and to the intercession of Santo Niño de Atocha. These servicemen began this pilgrimage in 1944 to express gratitude for their deliverance from the camp. Today, it has grown to include thousands of pilgrims each year, most coming around the Easter/Holy Week period.
Chimayó is a quiet place. The town itself is home to fewer than 3,000 people. It is also home to the famous Chimayó chile pepper, unique in its form and flavor, and still harvested and roasted using traditional methods. I love its description in Gastro Obscura: ‘The chimayó’s sweetness, which is rare in a hot chile pepper is followed by a long, slow burn that lingers like an interesting houseguest, as opposed to the abrupt interruption of a door-to-door salesman. They’re smokey too, and their spice is rated just above that of your average jalapeno.’
The chimayó is a locally adapted, or landrace, chile, one of several descendants of the first chiles believed to have been brought by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. Isolated agriculturally in rural pockets, these chiles took on the names of the remote pueblos where they were traditionally grown, and they have long been important parts of the diet and cuisines of local Hispanic and Native American families. Their isolation contributes to their varying and unique flavor profiles. Of the pack, the chimayó is considered by many to be the crown jewel and sells for more than $45/pound, locally. Most of what you find on line is not the real chimayó chile, which quickly sells out. You have to come to Chimayó in late fall to get it before it’s gone.
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Inside the Capilla del Santo Niño de Atocha Almost like tole-painting (folk art) |
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El Santo Niño de Atocha Patron saint of unjustly imprisoned, people in danger, and travelers. |
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Chimayó is part of the village of El Potrero Cute 1948 trading post |
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Tiny San Antonio Chapel at top of stairway on nearby hill Couldn’t find anything out about it. |
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Cholla flowers still blooming at these higher altitudes. Full of pollen |
Sugarite Canyon State Park
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From Legends of America, sturdy block houses and two-story school During the heydays of Sugarite Coal Mine I walked this hill which is no longer denuded of trees but now lacks houses and the school |
Based on the Sugarite Coal Camp brochure available from the park, the mining town seems to be an anomaly among coal camps. The Sugarite Camp never experienced a big disaster (see Dawson Cemetery below) during its years of operation, and despite the demanding, low-paying work typically found in any mining community, the former residents often remember their time at Sugarite as ‘the best years of their lives’ recounted during occasional reunions. Some of these former residents still return to visit their old ‘hometown’. This coal camp was where the rich cultural diversity, now known throughout this area, developed, as immigrants from all over the world converged to work the mines.
Families enjoyed recreation on various sports fields, socialized and learned new dance steps, and children earned an education in the schoolhouse. So beloved was the school, that students and teachers entered the burning structure in 1939 to save the books and a piano. Classes resumed the very next day in three vacant buildings. Life in the northern New Mexico coal camps was a far cry from the bloody union strikes found in the southern Colorado camps around the same time period.
The town had a baseball and a soccer field, a clubhouse (which included a ballroom, a billiard room, an ice cream parlor, a soda fountain, a candy room, a beer parlor, a cigar room, and a sewing room), a store (Blossburg Mercantile Company), the Bell Telephone Company, an opera house, a justice of the peace, a music teacher, a doctor’s office, a butcher (who gave out free liver and tongue), a community oven (women would bake bread and sell them for $0.15/loaf to the bachelors), and several houses, each one with electricity.
Baseball and soccer teams shared ‘tea’ after matches, possibly code for hard liquor during prohibition. Occasional dice games on the front steps of the clubhouse caught the attention of the Salvation Army, and gamblers were quickly hauled off to church.
The history of Sugarite Canyon State Park begins with the discovery of coal in the canyon in 1909. The original name of the canyon ‘Chicorica’, may have been derived from a Comanche term for turkey, or perhaps for the chicory plants growing in the canyon and in full brilliantly blue blooms when I visited.
Home to mule deer, elks, pronghorn antelopes, wild turkeys, foxes, black bears, and mountain lions. I saw mule deer, one elk, many canine and bear scats, turkeys galore and a dead badger. Hummingbirds were abuzz as there were many plants in bloom around the lakes.
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Lake Maloya in Sugarite Canyon. Beauty and rugged solitude One can mountain-bike around it, +/-
five miles |
Add to this, mining buildings and about 1,000 residents, representing nineteen nationalities and speaking seven languages. The mine produced a good grade of bituminous coal. People bought Sugarite’s coal to heat homes and power trains because it burned hot with few ‘clinkers’, a stony material left behind after coal burns.
People of all ethnicities worked together to get through rough times. The healthy cultural exchange was particularly evident by the wide assortment of food available in camp. Mexican tortillas, Slovenian sweet bread (poticas), Scottish scones, Greek roasted goat with lemon and butter, homemade Japanese sake, lobster for special events, etc.
The park’s visitor center is located in the original town post office. While I was there, one ranger was working with nearby bees, collecting their honey.
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Old coal cart behind visitor center located in original Sugarite post
office |
Compared to Dawson Mine, only 5 miners lost their lives here. Miners were only paid for the sellable coal they extracted, not all the digging, and shoring needed to extract it. Although backbreaking, it was considered ‘dead work’. Since miners were not paid for ‘dead work’, they would sometimes rush through it, with tragic consequences. Large chunks of coal called ‘pots’ dropped from unsupported ceilings, killing at least two men.
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Community oven in which women baked bread to sell to local bachelors for
$0.15/loaf |
Winemaking was a tradition in Italian and Slavic families, who received shipments of grapes from California. Every year, one ton made five barrels of wine, which were kept in cool stone basements and consumed throughout the year.
The doctor treated most of his patients on a dentist’s chair. Alcohol was the painkiller of choice. He pulled teeth, swabbed sore throats with iodine, and had clove salve for sore muscles. If a miner was injured or killed, the company considered it his fault.
Living conditions at Sugarite were among the best of all the coal camps. Water piped from the lakes to outdoor spigots was a great, and rare, convenience. Watering of gardens and washing was made easy this way.
They dug out up to 650 tons of coal/day from Mine #2 with its eleven miles of horizontal tunnels described as ‘dark as dungeon.’ Many a miner complained that mules, which hauled coal carts, were valued more highly than people, and harming a mule was a serious offense.
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The Swastika Brand, a sign of good luck in the days……… ‘Fancy lump, one of best Swastika coals’ From board inside park |
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What is left of the pulley system |
Once coal was out of the mine, it was conveyed on rails down the steep canyon slopes by means of a pulley system controlled by gravity and powerful biceps. These two giant wheels were wrapped with cable to which six full coal cars were attached. The cables ran through the brakeman’s tower. The brakemen would control the descent of the cars. As six full cars went down, six empty ones went up.
At the tipple, coal was sorted by size: ‘pea’, ‘nut’, ‘lump’, and ‘slag’. It was then tipped into railroad cars and transported out of the canyon.
Long before this beautiful canyon became a coal camp, it was home to a number of Native American tribes, including the Comanche, Ute, and Apache who hunted here for centuries. The canyon was active with cattle ranches in the late 1800’s. Later, Spanish explorers, mountain men, trappers, and traders traveled through the canyon as an alternative to the more difficult Raton Pass.
In the early days, miners relied on mules and burros to do the heavy work of pulling coal-filled carts from the underground mines to the surface. The coal was then hauled by wagon seven miles to Raton. A railroad line was constructed by the Santa Fe, Raton, and Eastern Railroad in 1905 to Lake Alice (first lake past the mining town). However, it was cut back to the town of Sugarite in 1911. For decades, the railroad made runs from the Sugarite mining camps to Raton, nearly every day.
After more than four decades of coal mining, which amounted to 562,497 tons, the mines began to shut down in 1941. At that time, there were 450 people living in the community. The railroad and the post office were closed in 1944. Afterward, many of the homes and buildings were moved to Raton and others were razed.
Sugarite Canyon State Park was established in 1985 and now receives about 125,000 visitors per year.
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Still many dead trees from the devastating 2011 human-caused fire Thankfully, nature is quietly
returning |
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The ‘obligatory’ National Monument sign Capulin volcano in background |
Open spaces continuously facilitate the wandering mind, New Mexico is no exception. I often ponder how many feet have touched the earth I now meander. No matter how remote a place may seem, people have invariably tramped the same ground.
When the Spanish arrived, there were hundreds of pueblos, including several large villages, heavily concentrated on waterways due to reliance on irrigation. The Apaches, Navajo, Utes, and Comanche roamed the canyons, mountains, and plains: hunting, foraging, trading, and raiding.
Overall, humans have been roaming this area for 10,000 – 15,000 years!
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Capulin, classic cone volcano surrounded by cattle ranches, many abandoned, and short but rich
prairie grasses |
Capulin last erupted between 56,000 and 62,000 years ago, a newborn, in geological times. During a period when mammoths and giant bison roamed these plains. It is one of the best examples of an extinct volcanic cinder cone in the USA. Rising 1,300 feet above the plain, its crater is 415 feet deep and 1,450 feet in diameter (one-mile circumference), and its base is 1.5-mile-wide (four-mile circumference). Wind during the last eruption pushed cinders to the east, so the east rim is 300 feet higher than the west. Name, Capulin, from Spanish for chokeberry, a plant found on the slopes of the volcano. Its top is at 8,182 feet of altitude and is where I witnessed the hilltopping (more on that below) of thousands upon thousands of ladybugs.
Capulin’s birth occurred toward the end of a period of regional volcanism that began nine million years ago. It had four consecutive lava flows, the first facing east of the cone, the second southeast, the third west, and the last one, north.
Union County, New Mexico, where Capulin is located, contains more or less 100 recognizable volcanoes. Descriptive words of what you see around here include: cinder cones, shield volcanoes, tuff rings, pressure ridges, volcanic domes, lapilli, volcanic ashes, rocks, or bombs.
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From National Monument’s website, aerial view of Capulin volcano Small whitish square west of rim
is the parking area |
Ancient and ongoing cultures have found the volcano to be more than a mountain but also a place of peace and reflection. Consider how a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or library can be an escape from the stress of normal life.
Looking around and below, everything looks so barren and dry. Just how decent is this land? Cowboys Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving were able to fatten up their Texas cattle and their wallets by grazing the rich short grasses found in the shadow of Capulin Volcano. They drove livestock to market in Colorado and Wyoming after wintering here. Their first 1866 trail drive is the basis of the famous story Lonesome Dove.
Capulin is located at the crossroad of mountain forest and high plains. This transitional mixture among two vastly different ecosystems provides habitat for several plants and animals. Cacti among the piñon pines, yuccas hidden under ponderosas, short grasses in open meadows surrounded by tall quaking aspens and junipers.
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If you know what you are looking for, you can see five states from here: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma,
and Texas |
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colorful but ephemeral cactus flower beauty |
Hilltopping on the edge of Capulin.
Before I explain hilltopping, let me say that a group of ladybugs is called a loveliness. I find that very charming. Thousands of ladybugs cover trees and bushes at the top of Capulin volcano starting in late June, a phenomenon called hilltopping. Every summer the beetles ride the wind to high points, where there are few natural predators. At Capulin, they cover the highest point of the rim.
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Orange Pilgrims, a loveliness of ladybugs hilltopping on Capulin During their brief lifespan, the females lay 200-1,000 eggs Beautiful hues against the green
lichen |
Technically, and contrary to popular belief, ladybugs are not true bugs. They are beetles. Many scientists prefer referencing the names ladybird beetle or lady beetle as identifying names, rather than the more widespread and less accurate ladybug moniker. I will, however, continue to use the more recognizable ladybug nickname.
Ladybugs are found throughout the world, on every continent but Antarctica. In fact, there are over 5,000 species of ladybugs, of which approximately 450 are native to North America. Of those many ladybug species, only one is a regular peak-bagger: Hippodamia convergens, the convergent ladybug.
For several months, every year, typically during Spring months, the convergent ladybug becomes a voracious eater of aphids. Although it can survive for long periods on other substances such as pollens, nectars, flower petals, and soft plants, aphids are an integral food source for the life cycle of the convergent ladybug. When I was there, they were attracted to my apple sauce.
Without aphids as their primary food source, female convergent ladybugs reabsorb their eggs within their bodies rather than laying them. With aphids as their primary food source, female convergent ladybugs can each lay 200-1,000 eggs during one Spring season. In such areas of large aphid populations, it is not unusual for an adult convergent ladybug to consume an average of 22 aphids per day.
During late Spring and early Summer, many convergent ladybugs begin migrating towards mountainous areas. The trek is not a graceful, straightforward type, as wind currents and air temperatures greatly influence migratory patterns. Winds help propel the flights of convergent ladybugs, pushing them towards higher elevations. However, once the ladybugs reach air temperatures of approximately 55°F they need to stop flying (same for Monarch butterflies), triggering a temporary free-fall until their bodies can warm up enough to continue the migration. This causes a sort of repetitive oscillation effect, the side-view of which would look like a sine wave.
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After feeding all summer, they hibernate through the winter. The ladybugs that survive ride a warm current off the rim in February. Riding the winds south to mate. |
Once they find their desired high elevation summits they tend to swarm ‘en masse’ and form colonies. Most of these mountain summit goals range between 6,000 – 8,000 feet elevation, but some might be as high as 10,000 feet, depending on current conditions.
Many ladybug dealers/collectors claim that some of these mountain colonies can contain as many as 500 gallons of ladybugs, with each gallon containing up to 72,000 – 80,000 ladybugs. I think I could see the equivalent of 15-20 gallons on Capulin’s rim path. Do the math!
It is unknown exactly why many convergent ladybugs seek out high elevations, but many speculate it is because high mountain summits are located far away from most primary predators such as other insects, birds, and spiders. It is also unknown why certain summits are preferable ladybug gathering sites over other nearby summits, but many speculate it might have to do with the coloration of the summit terrain, wind patterns, surface temperature of that terrain, and/or hiding places (such as cracks) within that terrain. The ladybugs I saw all seemed to prefer shaded areas, few were seen in the open.
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Sierra Grande, the largest volcano nearby, is a shield volcano Broad, gently sloping mountain made from numerous eruptions of fluid lava flows. Viewed from Capulin volcano |
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A sea of white trefoil crosses,
today, in the middle of nowhere |
On April 9, 1992, this cemetery was put on the National Register of Historic Places. It is unusual and rare for a cemetery to be recognized for this honor. However, the Dawson Cemetery met all the requirements because of its association with the broad patterns of immigration to our country, with its history of coal mining and company towns, and specifically its association with two of the worst underground mine disasters (behind West Virginia, 1907, with 367 fatalities) in the history of American coal mining.
A total of 263 men were killed in an underground explosion which took place on 10/22/1913. On 2/8/1923, another disaster occurred, and 122 men were killed. Virtually nothing remains today to show that over 32 million tons of coal were extracted from these hills and that the town was one of the largest in New Mexico in the 1920’s.
Often, it is the cemetery that bears the responsibility of relating the story of a town, especially when that town no longer exists.
Coal was found on the land about 1895, but the first coal mine didn’t open until 1901. In 1906 the Phelps Dodge Corporation purchased the property, mining the coal for use on the railroads and for smelting the copper from its Arizona mines. An increasing market for coal brought rapid development of the town until it reached a population of 9,000. Many were immigrants from the British Isles, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Sweden, and Yugoslavia.
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Phelps Dodge Mercantile (1914-1950) By 1919, the store had three branches, 60 employees and six delivery trucks Also manufactured 5,000 pounds of
ice per day! |
Dawson was the ONLY coal-producing town owned by Phelps Dodge, which may explain why the company transformed it into one of the most beautiful company towns in the country. Dawsonites, enjoyed luxuries not typically found in mining camps, including a movie theater, a bowling alley, a public swimming pool, an opera house, a 1,200-student school with bands, a twenty-six-bed hospital, and even a golf course. The town was proud to say that it had no shacks, everyone was properly housed.
The most heart-breaking of the markers in the cemetery are the rows and rows of identical white trefoil crosses. Making up half the cemetery burials, they are reminders of these two greatest tragedies. I saw three brothers born respectively in 1888, 1890, 1892, killed in the same disaster, and buried together.
Crosses closest to the mountain recall the victims of the first tragedy, an explosion in Mine #2 on October 22, 1913. Two hundred and sixty-three miners lost their lives when coal dust throughout the mine burst into flames from an overcharged shot, an explosion that was said to have sent flames roaring more than two hundred feet out from the tunnel opening. Phelps Dodge paid all burial expenses and offered bereaved widows some money to return to Europe if they desired.
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In 1910, the Dawson Opera House was the largest theater in New Mexico It could hold 1,180 people |
Almost a decade later, on February 8, 1923, tragedy again befell the town when a derailed train inside Mine #1 knocked over feed wires to ignite coal dust. The resulting explosion ripped through a tunnel, being worked by 124 men. Only two survived.
With the advent of natural gas and oil, the mine eventually closed around 1950. Bit by bit the town came apart, literally, as workers dismantled homes, stores, and schools and moved elsewhere, all within the span of a month’s time. The land was sold for scrap, in April 1950, Dawson was gone.
Bridge over the Rio Grande Gorge/Rift
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Her Rift…
beautiful bridge over the Rio Grande Rift |
There are only four known active continental rifts in the world. The Rio Grande rift is one of them. It extends from southern Colorado down the center of New Mexico into northern Mexico. The rift, and the mountains on the margins, continue to be geologically active today. Specifically, the rift is growing, gradually getting wider.
The Rio Grande Rift began forming between 29-35 million years ago, inducing a lot of geological activity on the margins. For example, the earthquakes along the eastern margin resulted in the uplift of New Mexico’s central mountains, including the Sandia, Manzano, Manzanita, and Sierras de los Pinos.
Over geologic time, continents collide and fuse together. They also split apart, along rifts. Rifts are linear features along which continents stretch. When a rift succeeds, the continent splits, and a new ocean basin forms between the two parts of the continent. Some rifts, however, fail to develop into seafloor (example: Lake Superior) spreading centers and instead leave major relict structures within continents ‘fossils’ preserving the geologic environments in which they formed.
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The ever-widening Rio Grande Valley created by the rift Viewed from the edge of 650-foot deep gorge, vertigo inducing… Volcanic basalt and gravel |
Very few active rift valleys are found on continental lithosphere. The East African Rift, the Baikal Rift Valley, the West Antarctic Rift, and the Rio Grande Rift are Earth’s major active continental rift valleys.
- The East African Rift (which I visited in 2018) is part of the ‘Great Rift Valley’ system. It consists of two main branches. The Eastern Rift Valley (aka Gregory Rift) includes the Main Ethiopian Rift and the Kenyan Rift Valley. The Western Rift Valley includes the Albertine Rift and the Red Sea Rift.
- The Baikal Rift Valley cuts through 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of Siberia, in eastern Russia. The Baikal Rift Valley is formed by a divergent plate boundary, where the Amur plate is slowly tearing itself away from the Eurasian plate and has been doing so for about 25 million years. The Amur plate is moving eastward at a rate of about 4 to 5 millimeters (.16 to .2 inch) a year.
- The West Antarctic Rift is a series of smaller rifts that roughly separate the two regions of Earth’s southernmost continent, West Antarctica, and East Antarctica. The West Antarctic Rift is one of the most difficult rift valleys to study, because it lies beneath the massive Antarctic Ice Sheet, which can be more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick.
- The Rio Grande Rift is a series of rift valleys along faults in the Southwestern United States. The Rio Grande Rift separates the Colorado Plateau, which is generally moving in a clockwise direction, from the older part (craton) of the North American plate. The Rio Grande Rift stretches from central Colorado to the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
This is the second highest bridge on the National Highway System, rising 650 feet above the stream of the Rio Grande. It was dedicated on September 10, 1965 and is a lasting monument to the untiring efforts of the citizens of northern NM to open this scenic area to the public. Beginning in July 1963, at a cost of $2.1M, the 1,272-foot-long bridge plays and integral role in connecting east-west travel. At the time it was built, the bridge was the second-highest suspension bridge in the nation, topped only by the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado.
Goodnight-Loving Trail
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From Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving And their many cattle drives from
1866 to 1875 |
When I saw the sign seen above, I had to research what it was about. The fertile grazing land surrounding the volcano was used by cowboys Charles Goodnight, often referred to as the ‘Father of the Texas Panhandle’ and Oliver Loving to fatten their cattle before driving them to market in Colorado. Their 1866 trail drive was the basis for Larry McMurtry’s 1986 Pulitzer prize winning novel ‘Lonesome Dove’.
In order to avoid the high toll of ten cents charged for each animal on the Raton Pass branch of the Goodnight-Loving Trail, Charles Goodnight blazed this route through Trinchera Pass in 1868 and used it until 1875 (when he blazed another trail northward from Fort Sumner, passing near Tucumcari and Clayton). Because it was shorter, had easier grades, and was toll-free later cattle drives followed Goodnight’s example. Charles Goodnight was a great Texas cattleman who also invented the chuckwagon. With the arrival of the railroad in the 1880’s, large-scale cattle drives became a romantic part of western history.
The famous old cattle trail, running 2,000 head of cattle, 2,000 miles from Texas to Wyoming, was blazed in 1866 by Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving. Crossing the Colorado River and then following the Pecos River, it was not a straight shot to Wyoming, but it avoided the threat of Comanche raids on the Texas plains. Much of the cattle was sold to the Bosque Redondo Reservation where Navajo and Mescalero Apache Indians were held after being forcibly removed from their homelands. Soldiers purchased the meat to feed the starving families in their care. A profitable enterprise for Goodnight and Loving. There is much more to know about these men, but I am only focusing on the cattle drives that happened near the Capulin volcano.
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So good, so beautiful, so tempting, the red chiles of New Mexico Traditionally, the length of the ristra matched the height of the person stringing it and was said to supply that individual with enough chiles to last until the next harvest. |
Each of the Southwestern states can be categorized according to their apparent geologic specialty. Arizona is the big Canyon state, Utah is the Mesozoic (Late Jurassic) fauna state, and Colorado is the big snow-capped Rocky Mountains state. New Mexico is the Volcano state or ‘Land of Volcanoes’, having one of the largest concentrations of young, well-exposed, and uneroded volcanoes on the continent. And as a bonus, it is also the Rift Valley state. This means that some of the best resources for studying the natural history of volcanoes occurs here in New Mexico.
Of note:
- Twenty percent of the US National Parks and Monuments based on volcanic themes are in New Mexico. There are more here than Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington combined.
- One of the largest young calderas in the world (Valles Caldera) is in New Mexico. Yellowstone is a caldera, but it is a less visually obvious example of this type of volcanic landform.
- Two of the largest young basaltic lava flows in the world (Carrizozo and McCarty) are in New Mexico. Some of the geological terms for surface features on lava flows were first defined here in New Mexico, not Hawaii.
- One of the greatest concentrations of young volcanic steam explosion craters (referred to as maars), occur in New Mexico. Zuni Salt Lake Crater and Kilbourne Hole Crater are two maars. The remains of maars literally fill White Rock Canyon and they pepper the surfaces of many of the other volcanic fields, like the Mount Taylor and Potrillo fields. They are more abundant, better preserved, and more diversely exposed than those in the Eifel district of Germany. European geologists come here to learn about maars.
- Several of the largest concentrations of young cinder cones (exemplified by the Raton-Clayton [where Capulin is located], Zuni-Bandera, and Potrillo fields for starters) are in New Mexico
- The greatest concentration and best-exposed examples of young volcanic necks in the world are in New Mexico (Rio Puerco Valley).
- The greatest diversity of young volcanic rock types and classic suites of volcanic rocks (for example, the Mount Taylor and the Raton-Clayton volcanic fields) occur in New Mexico.
- The Datil-Mogollon region of New Mexico is one of the largest concentrations of super-volcanoes (large calderas). These are more eroded than the Valles Caldera, but they are in the same state of exposure as the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, another collection of mid-Tertiary calderas. You would have to go to the Sierra Madre of Mexico, the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Alaska, or even Armenia to see something similar.
All of the principal types of volcanic landform (composite volcano, shield volcano, volcanic caldera, major ash-flows, pahoehoe and aa lava, maar crater, fissure eruptions, cinder cones) occur in New Mexico.
The youngest volcanic rocks in New Mexico are a scant 3,800 years old. At the other end of the age spectrum, volcanic rocks in parts of northern New Mexico are more than a billion years old.
Even with all these volcanoes, the chance of an eruption in New Mexico is less than 1% in the next 100 years. I have time to explore much more of these beautiful and varied formations.
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Now a junkyard, there used to be a
restaurant here |
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By Abel Espalin Clever, creative sunset picture from Albuquerque Had to share |
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