VallesCaldera.com – The independent news source about the Valles Caldera

As the National Park Service continues its two-month reconnaissance study assessing the feasibility of assuming management of the Valles Caldera and administering it as a National Park Service preserve, stakeholders of the Caldera have been studying the twenty NPS preserves to learn about the qualifications and experience of the National Park Service in managing land under preserve status [please note that the Albuquerque Journal has reported that there are eighteen NPS preserves, and it had therefore been reported as such on this web site.  However, depending on your criteria, there are up to twenty units of the National Park Service that could be considered NPS preserves].

The twenty national preserves managed by the National Park Service total 23.3 million acres (36,549 square miles), and include mountains, calderas, deserts, estuaries, prairies, seashores, lava fields, and battlefields.  The Valles Caldera’s 89,000 acres would constitute 0.3% of the total land area that is currently managed under preserve status by the National Park Service.

Clearly, the National Park Service (whose mission is “to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations”) has expertise with hosting a large number of visitors at its national preserves.  According to National Parks Traveler, the 20 NPS national preserves hosted a total of 4,386,749 visitors in 2006.  The Valles Caldera Trust, on the other hand, reported 17,000 visitors to the Valles Caldera last year.  In other words, the annual number of people who currently visit the Valles Caldera represents less than one-tenth of one percent of the total number of visitors that NPS preserves have the experience of hosting.

As mentioned in the prior post on VallesCaldera.com, when compared with all 359 units of the National Park Service, the Valles Caldera National Preserve would currently have the 41st-lowest visitor count (17,000 annually), placing it in the lowest 11% of the system in terms of visitation, according to National Parks Traveler.  Among NPS national preserves, the Valles Caldera would currently have fewer visitors than all NPS preserves in the lower 48 states — only six in Alaska and one in the U.S. Virgin Islands (Salt River Bay National Historic Park and Ecologic Preserve) host fewer visitors.

The United States’ first NPS National Preserves –  Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve, and Texas’ Big Thicket National Preserve — were established in 1974.

America’s newest national preserve, Great Sand Dunes National Preserve in Colorado, was established in 2004, and has a truly unique historical connection to the Valles Caldera, since part of the land that forms the Great Sand Dunes National Preserve was originally the Baca Location No. 4.  This was the fourth of five floats of land that the heirs of Don Luis María Cabeza de Baca were permitted to claim by an act of Congress in 1860 to compensate them for their original disputed grant in Las Vegas, NM that they were forced to abandon.  The Valles Caldera National Preserve consists of most of the Baca Location No. 1, the first of the five locations that the Bacas chose.

In the survey below, there is general information as to the character of each Preserve, as well as information on the permissibility of hunting, grazing, and off-roading, data on visitation, land size, as well as a link to each preserve’s official web site.

Sources: National Park Service, nps.gov, each NPS preserve, nationalparkstraveler.com.  Photos courtesy of the National Park Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, Alaska

Aniakchak is a 6-mile-wide, 2,000-foot-deep caldera formed by the collapse of a 7,000-foot mountain caused by a massive eruption 3,500 years ago.  Its most recent volcanic activity came in 1931.  Given its remote location and notoriously bad weather, Aniakchak is the least visited of all 359 units of the National Park System (60 people visited the park in 2006).

Hunting is allowed in the Preserve portions of Aniakchak.

The area was proclaimed a national monument on December 1, 1978, and established as a national monument and preserve on December 2, 1980.  The national monument is 137,176 federal acres and the preserve is 465,603 acres, of which 439,863 are federally managed.

Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska

Bering Land Bridge National Preserve was established to protect a portion of the Bering Land Bridge, which connected Asia with North America 13,000 years ago and provided the route over which humans first migrated from Asia to North and South America.

There are no roads into the preserve.  Access to the preserve is by bush planes or boats during summer months and by ski planes, snowmobiles or dog sleds during the winter.  The preserve’s western boundary lies 42 miles from the Bering Strait and the fishing boundary between the United States and Russia.

Unlike in some other national preserves, ATV-riding is not allowed in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.  Hunting is permitted, however.

The preserve, which is 2,698,919 acres in size, was originally established on December 1, 1978, as Bering Land Bridge National Monument.  On December 2, 1980, its designation was changed to a national preserve.  In 2006, the preserve hosted 356 visitors, making it the fourth-least visited of all 359 units of the National Park System.

Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida

Along with Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas, Big Cypress National Preserve became the first national preserve when it was established on October 11, 1974.

The freshwaters of the Big Cypress Swamp, essential to the health of the neighboring Everglades, support the rich marine estuaries along Florida’s southwest coast.  Big Cypress National Preserve contains a mixture of tropical and temperate plant communities that are home to a diversity of wildlife, including the elusive Florida panther.  The preserve is located in southern Florida, about 45 miles west of Miami, and is 720,567 acres in size.

The preserve’s enabling legislation provided for the usual and customary use and occupancy of the preserve by the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes.  Consequently, off-roading is allowed in Big Cypress, with over 22,000 miles of trails in the Preserve.  This has created controversy.  The National Parks Conservation Association has also called Big Cypress “the blighted poster child of what can go wrong when ORVs rather than park managers take the driver’s seat.”  Hunting, grazing, and exploration and extraction of oil, gas, and other minerals are allowed in the Preserve.

825,857 people visited Big Cypress National Preserve in 2006.

Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas

97,830 acre Big Thicket National Preserve, a heavily forested area in Southeast Texas, has been referred to as “an American ark” and “the biological crossroads of North America.”  The preserve was established on October 11, 1974, to protect the remnants of the area’s complex biological diversity.  What is extraordinary is not the rarity or abundance of its life forms, but how many species coexist there.  Once vast, this combination of pine and cypress forest, hardwood forest, meadow, and blackwater swamp is but a remnant. An exhausted settler wrote in 1835: “This day passed through the thickest woods I ever saw. It…surpasses any country for brush.”

Hunting, trapping, and mineral extraction are allowed in the preserve by permit.  However, camping is not permitted, nor is ATV-riding.

Big Thicket National Preserve hosted 91,126 visitors in 2006.

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, Idaho

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is a vast ocean of lava flows with scattered islands of cinder cones and sagebrush, located in the Snake River Plain in central Idaho. The protected area’s features represent one of the best preserved flood basalt areas in the continental United States, and is referred to by the National Park Service as a “weird and scenic landscape.”

The monument and preserve encompass three major lava fields and about 400 square miles of sagebrush steppe grasslands to cover a total area of 1,117 square miles.  All three lava fields lie along the Great Rift of Idaho, with some of the best examples of open rift cracks in the world, including the deepest known on Earth at 800 feet. There are excellent examples of almost every variety of basaltic lava as well as tree molds (cavities left by lava-incinerated trees), lava tubes (a type of cave), and many other volcanic features.

Craters of the Moon Monument was established on May 2, 1924.  For many years, geologists, biologists and environmentalists have advocated for expansion of the monument and its transformation into a national park. Part of that goal was reached in 2000 when the monument was expanded 13-fold from 53,545 acres to its current size of 714,727 acres in order to encompass the entire Great Rift zone and its three lava fields.  Opposition by cattle interests and hunters to a simple expansion plan led to a compromise of having the addition become a 410,000-acre national preserve in 2002 (which allows hunting, not ordinarily permitted in national parks and monuments). Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is co-managed by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, both under the Department of the Interior.  Grazing is permitted on the portion of Craters of the Moon administered by the BLM.

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve hosted 176,998 visitors in 2006.

Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Denali National Park and Preserve is located in interior Alaska and contains 20,320 foot-tall Mount McKinley (aka Denali), the tallest mountain in North America.  The park and preserve’s glaciated landscape supports a diversity of wildlife, including grizzly bears, caribou, wolves, Dall sheep and moose, while birds and wildflowers grace summer slopes.

Charles Sheldon took an interest in the Dall sheep native to the region, and became concerned that human encroachment might threaten the species.  After his 1907-1908 visit, he petitioned the people of Alaska and Congress to create a preserve for the sheep.  (His account of the visit was published posthumously as The Wilderness of Denali). The park was established as Mount McKinley National Park on February 26, 1917.  However, only a portion of Mount McKinley (not even including the summit) was within the original park boundary.  The park was designated an international biosphere reserve in 1976. A separate Denali National Monument was proclaimed by Jimmy Carter on December 1, 1978.

Mount McKinley National Park, whose name had been subject to local criticism from the onset, and Denali National Monument were incorporated and established into Denali National Park and Preserve by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in December 2, 1980.

Hunting is allowed on the national preserve portion of Denali National Park and Preserve.

415,935 people visited Denali National Park and Preserve in 2006.  The national preserve portion of Denali is 1,334,117 acres, and the entire National Park and Preserve is 6,075,029 acres.

Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Consisting primarily of portions of the Brooks mountain range, Gates of the Arctic is the northernmost national park in the U.S., located entirely above the Arctic Circle.  It is also the the second largest, with 8,472,506 acres — about the same size as Switzerland.

It was first protected as a national monument on December 1, 1978, before becoming a national park and preserve two years later in 1980 upon passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.  7,245,440 acres of Gates of the Arctic is preserved as a wilderness area, which along with the adjoining Noatak Wilderness Area forms the largest contiguous wilderness in the United States.  The national preserve potion of Gates of the Arctic is approximately 900,000 acres.

There are no established roads, trails, visitor facilities, or campgrounds in the park.  Unusual for a U.S. national park, some 1,500 people reside in 10 small communities in the park’s “resident subsistence zone” where they rely on park resources for survival.

Hunting is allowed on the preserve portion of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.

9,982 people visited Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in 2006.

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is located in southeastern Alaska.  It includes tidewater glaciers, snow-capped mountain ranges, ocean coastlines, deep fjords, and freshwater rivers and lakes. This diverse land and seascape hosts a mosaic of plant communities and a variety of marine and terrestrial wildlife.  No roads lead to the park and it is usually reached by air travel.

Glacier Bay includes nine tidewater glaciers. Four of these glaciers actively carve icebergs into the bay.  In the last century the bay’s most well-known glacier was probably the Muir Glacier, at one time nearly two miles wide and about 260 feet tall. The Muir Glacier has receded and since the 1990s is no longer tidewater.  As recently as 1750, Glacier Bay was entirely glacier-bound.

This area was first protected on February 25, 1925, when it became a national monument.  On Dec. 2, 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act was passed, which proclaimed it a national park and preserve.  The park and preserve are 3,283,246 acres, of which 57,000 acres form Glacier Bay National Preserve.

Hunting is permitted in the preserve portion of Glacier Bay.

413,382 people visited Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in 2006.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Colorado

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is the United States’ newest national preserve, created on September 13, 2004.  It features the tallest sand dunes in North America, found adjacent to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Southern Colorado.

The history of Great Sand Dunes is tied directly to the history of the Valles Caldera in Northern New Mexico.  As you can read about in the history section of VallesCaldera.com, in 1860 an act of Congress awarded the heirs of Don Luis María Cabeza de Baca five 100,000 acre floats of land of their choice in New Mexico territory to compensate them for the loss of a disputed 500,000 land grant that they abandoned in Las Vegas, NM.  The Baca heirs chose two locations in present-day New Mexico, two in Arizona, and one in Colorado.  The first float, “Baca Location No. 1,” became the ranch that formed the Valles Caldera National Preserve in 2000.  The fourth location formed the land that eventually became part of Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

In 1932, the sand dunes were designated a National Monument.  On November 22, 2000, the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve Act of 2000 was signed, which, with the help of the Nature Conservancy, paved the way for the 2004 purchase of 97,000 acres of the Baca Location No. 4, tripling the size of the park.  The north and west portions of the Baca Location No. 4 became the Baca National Wildlife Refuge.

Hunting and grazing are permitted in the preserve portion of Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is about 150,000 acres in size, and hosted 258,660 visitors in 2006.  Great Sand Dunes National Preserve is about 41,686 acres in size.

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, Louisiana

The six sites of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve represent a treasure trove of south Louisiana’s historical and cultural riches.  The park consists of six physically separate sites and a park headquarters:

1.  The Barataria Preserve (Marrero, LA) interprets the natural and cultural history of the region.  The preserve has trails and canoe tours through bottomland hardwood forests, swamps, and marsh.

2.  Chalmette Battlefield and National Cemetery (Chalmette, LA) is the site of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans and the final resting place for soldiers from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam.

3.  French Quarter (New Orleans, LA).  The headquarters of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve is in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

4.  Acadian Cultural Center (Lafayette, LA)

5.  Prairie Acadian Cultural Center (Eunice, LA)

6.  Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center (Thibodaux, LA)

Chalmette Battlefield and National Cemetery first gained federal protection in 1907.  It became part of the National Park Service in 1933. In 1978 the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve was authorized, of which the cemetery was part.

Hunting and trapping are allowed in designated areas of the Barataria Preserve portion of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve.

In 2006, 264,680 people visited the park and preserve, the six sites of which form about 20,000 acres.

Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska (See a photo of Katmai at the top of this post)

Katmai National Monument was created in 1918 to preserve southern Alaska’s Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a spectacular forty square mile, 100 to 700 foot deep ash flow deposited by Novarupta Volcano.  A national park and preserve since 1980, today Katmai is still famous for its fourteen active volcanoes (and calderas), but also for brown bears, pristine waterways with abundant fish, remote wilderness, and a rugged coastline along the Alaska Peninsula.

Hunting is permitted on the preserve portion of Katmai National Park and Preserve.

68,630 people visited Katmai National Park and Preserve’s 4,725,188 acres in 2006.  The combined size of the park and preserve is 4,725,188 acres, of which 423,720 acres form Katmai National Preserve.

Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, in southwestern Alaska, was created to protect scenic beauty (volcanoes, glaciers, wild rivers and waterfalls), populations of fish and wildlife, watersheds essential for red salmon, and the traditional lifestyle of local residents.

The park and preserve feature the junction of three mountain ranges (the Alaska Range, Aleutian Range, and the Chigmit Mountains), two active volcanoes (Iliamna and Redoubt), a coastline with rainforests on the east (similar to southeast Alaska), a plateau with tundra on the west (similar to Arctic Alaska), and turquoise lakes.

Hunting, trapping, and grazing are permitted on the preserve portion of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve.

Lake Clark National Park and Preserve was established in December 2, 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.  Only 5,320 people visited the Park and Preserve in 2006, as its 2.6 million acres can only be reached by aircraft (the preserve portion of Lake Clark is about 1.4 million acres).  This makes Lake Clark the fourteenth-least-visited of 359 units of the National Park Service.

Little River Canyon National Preserve, Alabama

Little River is unique because it flows for most of its length atop Lookout Mountain in northeast Alabama, and is the nation’s longest mountaintop river. Forested uplands, waterfalls, canyon rims and bluffs, pools, boulders, and sandstone cliffs offer settings for a variety of recreational activities.

Little River Canyon National Preserve was created in 1992, subsequent to which it was part of Alabama’s DeSoto State Park.

Hunting and ATV-riding are allowed inside the Preserve.

The Preserve is 14,000 acres in size, and hosted 211,047 visitors in 2006.

Mojave National Preserve, California

Singing sand dunes, volcanic cinder cones, Joshua Tree forests, and carpets of wildflowers are all found at this 1,534,819-acre preserve that protects a massive swath of the Mojave Desert of Southern California.  A visit to its canyons, mountains and mesas will reveal long-abandoned mines, homesteads, rock-walled military outposts, and a historic railroad depot.

The preserve was created by an act of Congress — the California Desert Protection Act of 1994 — which also elevated Southern California’s Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Monuments to national park status.  Prior to this act, the area was administered as the East Mojave National Scenic Area, under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management.

Hunting and grazing are permitted at Mojave National Preserve.

537,250 people visited the Preserve in 2006.

Noatak National Preserve, Alaska

As one of North America’s largest mountain-ringed river basins with an intact ecosystem, the Noatak River in northwestern Alaska features some of the Arctic’s finest arrays of plants and animals. The river is classified as a national wild and scenic river, and offers stunning wilderness float-trip opportunities – from deep in the Brooks Range to the tidewater of the Chukchi Sea.

The basin was proclaimed a United States National Monument in 1978 and a National Preserve in 1980 through the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Noatak National Preserve borders Kobuk Valley National Park on the south and Gates of the Arctic National Park on the east.

Hunting and grazing are allowed in Noatak National Preserve.

3,272 people visited Noatak’s 6,569,904 acres in 2006, making it the tenth-least-visited of all 359 units of the National Park Service.

Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve, U.S. Virgin Islands

Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve on the Virgin Island of St. Croix contains the only known site where members of a Columbus expedition set foot on what is now United States territory. It also preserves upland watersheds, mangrove forests, and estuarine and marine environments (such as coral reefs and a submarine canyon) that support threatened and endangered species. The site is marked by Fort Salé, a remaining earthworks fortification from the French period of occupation, about 1617. The park also preserves prehistoric and colonial-era archeological sites, including the only existing example of a ball court in the Caribbean.

Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve was created in 1992, and is jointly managed by the National Park Service and government of the Virgin Islands of the United States.

2,526 people visited the 1,015-acre park and ecological preserve in 2006, making this the seventh-least-visited of all 359 units of the National Park System.

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Kansas

The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve is a 10,894-acre public/private partnership between The Nature Conservancy, the National Park Service and the Kansas Park Trust.

Tallgrass prairie once covered 140 million acres of North America. Within a generation the vast majority was developed and plowed under. Today less than 4% of it remains, mostly in the Kansas Flint Hills. The preserve conserves a nationally significant remnant of the once vast tallgrass prairie and its cultural resources.

In June of 1994, the National Park Trust purchased the 10,894-acre Z Bar Ranch in the Flint Hills of Kansas from a state bank that was managing the ranch after its owners disbanded.

On November 12, 1996, Congress passed legislation to convert the Z Bar Ranch into the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, in order to provide a major missing element of the National Park System. The legislation intended for most of the land to continue to be owned by the National Park Trust, while being managed through a partnership between the Trust and the NPS.

By 2004, the National Park Trust had run into financial difficulties, to the extent that it appeared portions of the land would be sold to satisfy its debt.  Consequently, the Nature Conservancy acquired the property from the National Park Trust.  Today, the land is managed by a partnership between the National Park Service, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Park Trust (with day-to-day management perfomed by the NPS).  34 acres of the property are federally-owned, while the remaining 10,800 acres are owned by the Nature Conservancy.

Grazing is permitted in the Preserve. However, unlike most NPS preserves, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve does not allow hunting and fishing.

In 2006, 27,260 people visited Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, Florida

The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve is located in the city of Jacksonville, FL, covering 46,000 acres. Critical wetland habitats are protected within the preserve, which contains more than 300 privately held pieces of land. The Fort Caroline National Memorial is located in the Timucuan Preserve, as is the Kingsley Plantation. The preserve is maintained through cooperation by the National Park Service, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the City of Jacksonville Department of Parks and Recreation, and is named for the Timucua Indians who once lived throughout northern Florida.

The Theodore Roosevelt Area of the park offers a glimpse of five different Florida ecosystems. Nature trails wind through mounds of oyster shells left by the native Timuccuan Indians, and observation decks overlook salt marshes where visitors can see wood storks, great blue herons, and ospreys, as well as an array of seasonal wildlife. There are several recreational kayak routes as well as public docks and boat ramps in the preserve that provide a view of plants and animals that are not visible from land.

Hunting is permitted at Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.

The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, which was established in 1988, was visited by 1,011,989 people in 2006.

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in southeast Alaska is the largest unit of the national park system in the United States, covering an area larger than nine states. The combined park and preserve consist of 10,950,000 acres, while the preserve features 4,171,000 acres.

The Alaska, Chugach and Wrangell-Saint Elias ranges converge here in what is referred to as the “mountain kingdom of North America.” This spectacular wilderness includes the continent’s largest assemblage of glaciers, and the greatest collection of peaks above 16,000 feet, including Mount St. Elias (18,008′), the second highest peak in the United States. The vast majority of the Park and Preserve (9,660,000 acres) is designated as wilderness. The park and preserve are part of a 1979-designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Hunting, fishing, and grazing are allowed at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, which hosted 50,336 visitors in 2006.

Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Alaska

Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve encompasses 115 miles of the 1,800-mile Yukon River and the entire Charley River basin in eastern Alaska, along the Canadian border.  Many historic sites and rustic cabins from the Klondike Gold Rush can be found in the Preserve.

The area was proclaimed as a United States national monument on December 1, 1978, and was redesignated a national preserve on December 2, 1980.

Hunting, fishing and grazing are allowed in the Preserve.

12,083 people visited the 2.5 million-acre Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve in 2006, making this the sixteenth-least-visited of 359 units of the National Park Service.