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

The latest addition to VallesCaldera.com’s section of 360° virtual-reality panoramas comes from a meadow on top of a foothill on the eastern flank of Cerro del Medio (which means “middle mountain”). Also known as “CDM,” the mountain is the oldest ring-fracture dome in the Valles Caldera (formed about 1.2 million years ago). The Valle Grande can be seen through the trees as the panorama opens.   Click here to download this panorama.  You can also see some views from the sky of Cerro del Medio here and here.

QuickTime (version 5.0 or above) must be installed to view our 360° panoramas. Click here to install QuickTime. You also need to have a high-speed internet connection, as this panorama is more than seven megabytes in size. QuickTime will automatically launch when the panorama has been downloaded.

Once the panorama loads, enter full-screen mode (by pressing Command-F on a Mac or Control-F on a PC) for the most enjoyable viewing experience. Drag the cursor in any direction to change your perspective. You can also press the shift key to zoom in, and the Command key (Control key on a PC) to zoom out.

Finally, enjoy the remainder of our collection of virtual-reality 360° panoramas — many of which feature locations that the public has rarely, if ever, been granted access.

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In this controversial chapter of the post-Baca Ranch era, in which a spirited debate about alternative visions of future management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve has been extensively covered by state and national media, it is fitting to reflect on this Thanksgiving Day about certain historical aspects of the scenic crown jewel of New Mexico for which one should be thankful, because without these details of history this land might not be owned by the American people today.

1. The Baca Ranch was never subdivided.  Throughout the entire 140-year history of private ownership of the Baca Location No. 1 (the land that became the Valles Caldera National Preserve), the parcel of land (originally 99,289.39 acres) was never subdivided.  This was despite, among other things, an 1898 court decree calling for the partitioning of the land amongst the dozens of various heirs of Luis Maria Cabeza de Baca (and other landowners, including Joel Parker Whitney and Maríano Otero) who each held fractional interests in the ranch (this order was later overturned by court-appointed commissioners).  If partitioning had happened then (or at any time in the next century) it is not unrealistic to conclude that our Caldera might today be a patchwork of communities, resorts, golf courses, and hotels.  It also certainly would have made the establishment of the Valles Caldera National Preserve in 2000 impossible.
2. The Dunigans were responsible stewards of the land, and played hardball to stop clearcutting.  The Dunigans of Abilene, Texas, were the final private owners of the Baca Ranch, having purchased the land in 1963.  However, they did not own the timber rights to the land; in 1918, a 99-year lease to the timber rights had been signed by the Redondo Development Company, which later deeded the rights to the New Mexico Timber Company.  In the mid-20th century, New Mexico Timber Company began clearcutting the forests of the Baca Ranch (clearcutting is a logging practice in which all trees are cleared from an area).  In fact, the owner of New Mexico Timber, T. P. Gallagher, Jr., stated about the timber on the Baca Location that his company “intended to log it all” (Anschuetz 2007).  Chagrined at the harm that this practice was causing to the land, James Dunigan sued the owners of the timber interests in 1964.  Clearcutting continued for the next seven years as a legal battle was waged between the Dunigans and New Mexico Timber, until Dunigan purchased the timber interests back from the company in 1971, ending clearcutting on the Baca Ranch.  He bought back the timber rights for $1.25 million, which was a hefty 50% of the $2.5 million that he had spent eight years prior to purchase the entire ranch.  Author Kurt Anschuetz pays tribute to the good land stewardship of the man from Abilene as such: “Dunigan… went to extraordinary lengths, as shown by his lawsuit against New Mexico Timber, Inc., to try to restrain wasteful land use. Further, his companies eventually sold the Baca Location back to the public after his death…It is clear that Dunigan was interested in long-term conservation and went to great lengths to restore and sustain the property’s scenic qualities.”  Without Dunigan’s efforts, the scenic and environmental values of the Caldera might today be substantially diminished because of clear-cutting, and were it not for Dunigan’s wish that the Baca Ranch be sold to the American people upon his death, it is not unreasonable to assume that in 2000 the land would have been sold to private interests, precluding the creation of the Valles Caldera National Preserve.
3. After 140 years, the Baca Ranch was purchased by the American people.  Q. What do the following have in common:  Jemez National Monument (1916-1932), Pajarito National Park (1916-1932), Jemez Crater National Park (1939), Valle Grande National Park (1961), Valles Caldera National Park (1979)?  A. All of these names represent unsuccessful efforts by local residents and political leaders throughout the 20th century to have the Baca Ranch purchased on behalf of the American people (the years represent when each proposal was floated).  For nearly a century, these efforts failed, until the Dunigan family sold the ranch to the American people in 2000 for $101 million, with the money coming from the Land and Water Conservation Fund.  Given that there had been so much energy invested for so many decades in finding a way for the Baca Ranch to become public land, without success, it was a remarkable confluence of events and circumstance that enabled New Mexico’s representatives from both political parties (as well as the President of the United States) to work together and find the political will to compromise on a deal that enabled the Baca Ranch, at long last, to be preserved into perpetuity.