Thousands of people per year drive to Chimayo through the brown desert between the Nambe Creek Valley and the Santa Cruz River Valley. Tourists love this stretch for its strange rock formations, big views of the southern Rockies and full views of the Jemez Mountains at the northern distances. Though the area is public land (Bureau of Land Management), for years few people stopped or walked here. Now, thanks to social media, interest in the “Nambe Badlands” has exploded.
Mountain bikers need distance and interesting terrain. Hikers need scenery and their minds tend to wander along with their feet. They might ask themselves where they are and why things look like they do. They wonder what hazards await, and what their dogs will drag in from the desert. The Nambe badlands are made of stories. The land fairly bleeds narratives.
Why Does this Place Look Like it does?
First thing I noticed in the Nambe Badlands is the lack of grass and other vegetation. Well, it’s just dry I thought. A few scraggly junipers and some clumps of Russian thistle (tumbleweed). Then I remembered all the stories of sheep grazing in northern New Mexico dating back to the decades before the Chile Line railroad used to blow its whistle west of here starting in 1880. Millions of sheep were brought in around 1830 then more came in on the train that connected to a network of rails in Colorado.
Released widely across the region, sheep decimated the native grasses from the high country down to the Rio Grande for about a hundred years. The sheep pulled the grass out by the roots and since nobody was regulating sheep grazing, they grazed the land to dust in many places. Until the federal government established the Forest Reserves in the higher country around the turn of the century, there was no grazing regulation at all in northern New Mexico. (This area was not part of the forest reserves.)
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) which manages the Nambe Badlands probably assumed management responsibility for this area around 1946. They allowed ranchers to run cattle here and the cows compacted the soils and destroyed most of the remaining native grasses. That’s why nothing grows in the Nambe Badlands. Don’t blame the desert itself. Blame the people who treat it like Indiana or Spain.
Given how close we are to Nambe Pueblo (a couple of miles south of here) it is safe to think these lands were part of Nambe Pueblo’s world until the arrival of the Spanish in 1598. The Spanish gave the Pueblo a small land grant. Later these lands may have been part of a Spanish or Mexican land grant. For whatever reason, they became part of the “public domain”. Public domain lands were unclaimed lands all over the US, lands that had been taken from Native people, or had been purchased or won in wars or all the above. The BLM assumed management of millions of acres of land that was public domain. Exhaustive research could reveal why this land, so close to Pueblo and Spanish communities is BLM land.
The BLM manages 245 million acres of land in the US, mostly desert land in the West. Environmentalists call the BLM the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining” because the agency promotes extractive use of its lands, and it has allowed lands throughout the West to be severely overgrazed. You can see old cattle droppings and old stock pond dams in the Nambe Badlands area. It is hard to imagine that cattle could find anything to eat out here, but that won’t stop the BLM from permitting grazing here or ranchers from turning their cattle loose in this vegetation-less land.
It is safe to think that if we were standing on the Nambe Badlands in 1800, the land would have been covered with native grass and would have been less eroded. Note the deep gullies and arroyos. These gullies deepened dramatically after livestock destroyed the native grasses.
Deep Past
The high cliffs of the Nambe Badlands expose layers of sand and rock that has washed off the Sangre de Cristo Mountains over the last 40 million years. These soft rock layers are known as the Tesuque Formation. The Tesuque Formation is a young formation, widespread in the Espanola Basin clear up to the edge of the Colorado Plateau north of Abiquiu. This layer extends under the volcanic rocks of the Pajarito Plateau to the west.
There are some mysterious aspects of these rock layers. The white bands in the cliffs may be volcanic ash layers from ancient volcanic activity. There are also hard brown layers at places that appear to be older calcified sediments.
The Bureau of Land Management has identified fossils in this area and some cultural sites. In the Jacona Badlands west of Highway 285 at Pojoaque, many Pleistocene fossils have been found such as mastodon bones, saber tooth tiger bones etc.
The Future of These Trails
The trails in the Nambe Badlands are what land managers call “social trails,” meaning they were established by public use rather than being built by design. The trail network can expand as bicycles find new routes. Many people would like trail signs and numbers such as the Dale Ball Trails near Santa Fe have.
Mountain bike riders are creating new trails helter skelter. The cryptobiotic soils that fix nitrogen and stabilize the soils get destroyed by feet and bicycles. Fortunately, we don’t have motorcycles in this area.
Right now, the Bureau of Land Management is seeking comments on how these trails should be managed. Some people want these trails closed because of increased traffic in nearby residential areas. Clearly people need to have hiking and biking opportunities on these lands that we all own together. This area is increasingly popular, showing a clear demand for recreation access.
You can comment to the BLM right now and offer any ideas you have about the Nambe Badlands trails. Do you want these trails to remain open? Should the trails be signed and expanded? Should they clearly close this area to motorized vehicles such as dirt motorbikes? Should they stop new trails from starting?
We only have until January 31 to register our comments and counter those who seek to have this area closed. Here’s the link to send in your comments: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/120294/510. Here’s the link for the comment form: Public Comment Form for Routes.docx (live.com)
(Remember. Never take public lands for granted. Public lands only exist in a functioning democracy. Protect our democracy and protect our public lands.)
