Although the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are almost
synonymous with New Mexico, the range – the longest in the United
States – extends about 110 miles into Colorado. Tom Wolf, a writer
and one-time forestry student, explores these northern Sangres in
Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Starting
with the Anasazi and continuing through the Spanish, Mexicans and
Americans, the mountains have been a remote outpost of empire,
operated to serve imperial needs. Wolf details this relentlessly:
overgrazing by early settlers, clear-cutting in the mining days,
too many sheep when America needed wool during World War I,
re-education camps to Americanize the immigrants of the Huerfano
coal camps, lest they become socialists.
The
intrusion continued with the designation of the spine of the
Sangres as wilderness in 1993; wilderness designation, Wolf argues,
is an attempt to preserve, like a fly in amber, a mountain range
that continues to change even geologically, for the Sangres are
still rising. Meanwhile, the richest and most diverse lands are
those big domains in private hands, such as the Baca grant and the
Forbes Trinchera Ranch, a fact which leads Wolf to propose a
management system based on a conservation trust, rather than
federal management.
There is much to argue with
in his proposals, and the book isn’t always easy reading. Wolf is
often so technical about the trees that the reader has trouble
envisioning the forest. But almost always he comes to the reader’s
rescue with a great phrase like “wind strong enough to blow Christ
off the cross.”
Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo
Mountains is solidly researched and provocative. It should serve as
the base for some lively discussions and perhaps even action toward
new management methods. These days the landscape may suffer more
from wilderness lovers than it did from shepherds and
lumberjacks.
University Press of Colorado, P.O.
Box 849, Niwot, CO 80544 (800/268-6044). Hardcover, $39.95. 340
pages. Illustrated with photos by Barbara Sparks, maps by Myrna
Schrader.
*Ed
Quillen
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Mountain outposts of empire.
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