“ The country north of Santa Fe is the heart of Indian and Spanish New Mexico. Here, if he looks beyond the narrow boundaries of the highway right-of-way, the traveler can see Indian and Spanish villages which have not changed significantly in two and a half centuries. Along the lush green of the Rio Grande Valley or of its tributaries dashing out of the Sangre de Cristo range to the east, these sleepy concentrations of people reveal cultural and language patterns which smack of the conquistadores of the sixteenth century or of the ancient cliff dwellers. ”

“ The jet traveler approaching from the west beholds the greatest, most spectacular panorama of all, the true wasteland of the desert, with vast blocks uplifted from out of earth’s crust, plateaus dissected by giant empty canyons whose walls are seared to utter nudity by ages of the most intense sunshine on our continent. Here the architecture of nature is all designed on a gigantic scale, and the climate exhibits influences of a mighty ocean, of towering mountain chains, and the range of wandering planetary winds which created the desert. ”

“ Here in New Mexico, then, escape the irritations that seem to go with progress. Awaiting the traveler are unspoiled places where he can surround himself with the quiet majesty of nature, walk the paths made by prehistoric people, camp where the Spanish conquistadores camped, stroll among the ruins of buildings erected by the men who helped to fashion the Southwest. ”

“ Indian, Spanish, American—vital forces that are today working toward a genuinely unique culture in New Mexico. The modern world may well give to the Southwest the idea or catalyst that will blend these elements into a single force. Science, techniques, ideas are things of the present and are for the present to assess and synthesize. The Indian gods of air, earth, and sky and the white man’s gods of morality and science do not differ a great deal in their aspirations for their chosen people, and perhaps they will decree a splendid and unique synthesis from the cultural mosaic. ”

“ The complexity of the region’s geology, scenery, and terrain is matched by an equally complex history.
The history is a mosaic of many hues, some harsh and stark like its dry desert mountains, some inviting like the shade and coolness of its timbered canyons and mountain springs. First were the many diverse and sometimes hostile Indian cultures. There were peaceful pueblo peoples tilling their lands, using the Rio Grande’s flowing water to produce abundance. ”

“ Acoma Indian Pueblo, the Sky City, is famous in both history and legend. Built on the top of a lofty, almost inaccessible, redrock mesa some 357 feet high, it is one of the most picturesque of all New Mexico Indian pueblos. No other pueblo gives one such a clear sense of living in ancestral times. The movements of the people up and down the steep trails, the untiring vistas, and the ancient homesites are reminiscent of the life and times of the cliff dwellers. Here the archeologists can search out the secrets of ancient life by direct observation. ”

“ When driving across New Mexico or when visiting some part of the state, one should be aware of the wealth of history that is always close at hand. Many people, when faced with what seems like endless miles of empty country, fail to realize that the very emptiness is one of the charms of the state. They also do not recognize that in the vast expanses of mountain and desert, people of the ancient past or a recent past have lived and worked and died. ”

“ In the region north of Silver City lies high mountain country, much of it preserved as the Gila Wilderness Area. Here a person who wishes the solitude of forest and mountain, the thrill of trout fishing in a clear cold stream, and a wealth of wildlife can find his heart’s desire. In the heart of this wilderness, the traveler might well find some of the ancient homes of the Mimbres people. History and recreation blend into one. ”

“ The vast sweep of New Mexico’s 77 million acres, which ranges all the way from the Alpine tundra of the tallest mountains down to the heat of the lower Sonoran desert, offers a home and sanctuary for many kinds of wild life.
Some of these animals are considered game animals; others may be pests, since they prey upon or destroy what mankind regards as its own. The coyote which takes a sheep from the small herder is wicked indeed in the eyes of the sheepman. Predatoriness on all living things by other things has gone on since time began and will continue—mankind being not the least predator. ”

“ The Engelmann makes a dense forest hardly allowing invaders, but the blue is more tolerant, less austere. It loves the water and is the natural companion of chill, cascading trout streams. Though fond of shadow, it seems to grow equally well where the narrow canyons widen and admit the sunshine upon the tiny meadows of lush grass, cranesbill, velvety red cinquefoils, lupines, and yellow columbines. ”

“ I appeal, however, for a greater vigilance over plant life and soils nowadays from everybody. In such protected areas as the Fort Bayard Reservation, the U.S. National Forest enclosures, and the frontier cemeteries, the imagination can visualize a New Mexico that is far different from what is here today—a close-picked, hard-used land where unwise woodcutting has continued through much of the last three centuries and where the thin ranges have been required to support in the last century alone perhaps more than one hundred million cows, sheep, and horses. ”

“ The Spanish, too, succumbed to a stronger people and have been denied the privilege commonly accorded to conquered peoples, that of mixing their blood with that of the conquerors. One finds today in New Mexico three distinct people—Indian, Spanish, and Anglo-American—as sharply contrasted as the strands in a Navajo blanket. There is pure red alongside white, and only rarely do the colors blend into pinks or grays. This is why we must say that New Mexico is a mosaic, not a synthesis, of many elements, clearly defined. ”

“ Its thin spiky hair gives it little or no protection against cold, and only in the balmier parts of New Mexico does it feel at home.
The desert bighorn sheep, as distinguished from his cousin the Rocky Mountain bighorn, goes around on a sun-scorched, ocotillo-covered limestone-rubble slope in the full glare of the sun and lies down to take his afternoon siesta. The Rocky Mountain bighorn, on the other hand, with his preference for cooler climates does not shun even the dense spruce timber at the very top of the Sandia Mountains as the hideout for his afternoon rest. ”

“ Mining camps sprang up along the mountain fringes as new discoveries of silver and gold came to light. Around Socorro and Magdalena, in the Mogollon Mountains, at Hillsboro and Kingston in the Black Range, and hundreds of other places in New Mexico and the Southwest, men hungry for quick wealth swarmed over the hills and mountains and built their roaring camps. While miners were tapping the subsurface wealth, cattlemen were staking out their claims to the grasslands, both on the eastern plains and in the high mountain meadows. ”

“ The huge open-pit copper mine at Santa Rita, the many uranium mines near Grants, the underground potash mines near Carlsbad, and the thousands of oil and gas wells in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the state are typical of man-made landscape features attributable to mineral exploitation in New Mexico. Numerous old mine dumps, rotting mine shafts, and spooky ghost towns are reminders of past fortunes won and lost.
The rocks, the work of water, wind, and sun, and the not insignificant upheavals by man have shaped New Mexico’s landscapes. ”

“ Hunting is a conservation practice that, wisely administered, results in wholesome out-of-door recreation and brings many tons of high protein food of highest quality to the table. Nature nowhere in her economy locks up a resource and throws away the key—we should be no less wise.
Long gone are the buffalo which once roamed the High Plains of eastern New Mexico. Exotic animals, imported and stocked along the rugged canyon of the Canadian River above Conchas Reservoir, are the Barbary sheep with their magnificent coiled horns. ”

“ While Spain lost its empire and New Mexico and the Southwest sank into poverty and decay, yet another force was on the march, a force that welled up in an Anglo-American people clinging to the Atlantic Coast of North America. As these people developed a nation, they also discovered a sense of destiny which turned their faces to the west and their footsteps toward the sunset. With them moved their culture. At first, it was a trickle, a few traders bent on profit, crossing the plains on the Santa Fe Trail. ”

“ There is one short trip that would be fruitful for him who wants to know New Mexico, to feel the romance of Spanish culture, and to seek adventure off the beaten track. Just north of Española, State Highway 76 strikes east from U.S. 64. Nowhere in the state can be found so much of old world charm or spectacular scenic beauty. Heading east, the traveler passes through Chimayó, a village famed throughout the world for its weaving, though seldom visited, then on through Truchas and Las Trampas to Penasco, heart of the Penitente country. ”

“ He will wonder, after traversing the border counties at the western edge of the Great Plains, at the infrequency of plowlands, and will promptly conclude that New Mexico is one vast, bare desert—an impression that will be corrected rapidly when he visits the dark National Forests where the slim, crowded spruces and firs tower skyward. ”

“ The history of the American occupation of the Southwest is as complex and diverse as its predecessors. Its ingredients include cattle, mining, railroads, agriculture, science, and the Indian. All these, and others, combined to give an Anglo-American slant to the Southwest. The Indian culture did not disappear, nor did the Spanish, but rather a new stratum was cast that was to complete the mosaic.
When the American arrived in New Mexico, he found a poor, backward area, hungry for trade and outside contacts. He found the Indians of the Southwest in open rebellion against the white men. ”

“ But heroes can only lead an age, never surpass it. History, then, is people and their catalyst, ideas.
The history of New Mexico, like twentieth century science, is multi-dimensional. Its complex cultural patterns fit with the intricate variety of its geologic wonders and its flora and fauna. In reality, New Mexico is a part of a broader concept, the Southwest. This vast region, which includes western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, part of southern Colorado, and southern Utah, has given rise to some of man’s greatest achievements. ”

“ Floods of red sand and clay, washed from the rotting hills, wiped out the seas of northern and central New Mexico, and intertongued southward with marine limestones. These early Permian rocks are the Hueco Limestone near El Paso, there 2200 feet thick, the Abo Redbeds near Albuquerque, 45 and the upper Sangre de Cristo Redbeds southeast of Santa Fe. Wherever the redbeds crop out, their dark reddish brown hue, speckled and striped with spots and streaks of green, enlivens the drab gray-and-brown landscape. ”

“ As impressive as his achievements in domesticating plants, in building massive structures, and in developing symbolism and aesthetic values to match his material advances, the Indian’s greatest heights were reached in his philosophy on nature and life. He conceived himself to be, not master of creation, but a single factor in the scheme of things. ”

“ From the altitude of a cruising jet, the distances, the speed, the color, and the light are indescribably exhilarating.
Since the traveler arriving from any direction can see for identification only a few species, it will suffice to point out only two of the harbingers of eastern New Mexico, both of which are dominant on that area of the Great Plains: the blue grama grass, which in fall and winter bears the graceful sickle-shaped head, and the small Yucca glauca which cannot be mistaken for anything else. ”

“ The nature trail, a half mile loop that begins and ends near the entrance to the Caverns, guides the visitor to many of the desert plants of the region. The park is visited by more than half a million people each year, and yet the delicate cave formations and the natural beauties remain unmarred. ”

“ A bajada is the most characteristic single feature of all in the sloping, stony topography of the desert—and remember that the surface of the desert is regularly sloping and stony. The Spanish word itself means only a down slope, but it has come to have a semitechnical sense—a fan-shaped apron of rocky debris at the foot of a mountain where it has settled out of the summer torrents and there keeps accumulating in successive floods. ”

“ Carlsbad Caverns National Park offers more than the caverns themselves. Each evening from April to October, bats in incredible numbers spiral upward out of the Caverns’ entrance and fly southward over the rim of the escarpment to feed in the valleys of the Black and Pecos rivers. They return just before dawn, diving swiftly and from high altitudes into the entrance. Flying directly to the bat cave, they spend each day hanging head downward in dense clusters from the walls and ceilings. The bat cave itself is not open to visitors. ”