Treesearch

Adolf Bandelier described the Valles Caldera in the mid-1880s: The Valles Mountains separate the northern section of the Queres district from that claimed by the Jémez tribe. Against the chain of gently sloping summits which forms the main range from the peak of Abiquiu to the Sierra de la Palisada in the south abuts in the west an elevated plateau, containing a series of grassy basins to which the name of “Los Valles” (the valleys) has been applied. Permanent streams water it, and contribute to make an excellent grazing region of this plateau. But the seasons are short. For snow fills the...

During their cadastral survey preceding confirmation of the Baca Location No. 1 (Baca Location) to Luis María Cabeza de Baca’s heirs in 1876, Daniel Sawyer and William H. McBroom noted that the grant “contained an abundance of pine and aspen timber” (Sawyer and McBroom 1876:14–15).

The Valles Caldera is the result of the youngest major volcanic episode in the creation of the central Jémez volcanic field. This geological feature is a diverse suite of basaltic through rhyolitic rocks, which erupted from some time less than 13 million years ago to no later than .13 million years ago. It represents some of the greatest volcanic activity documented in the earth’s history.

The land use history of the Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP), as represented in the documentary record maintained in various archives and libraries, focuses primarily on the Hispanic and Anglo-American occupation of the locale subsequent to 1860. In an act of June 21, 1860, the U.S. Congress authorized the Baca Land Grant heirs to choose as many as five square tracts of “vacant land” (i.e., places where there was neither permanent residence nor formally claimed ownership) to replace the 496,447-acre (200,901-ha) grant to which they had agreed to extinguish their rights in favor of...

The land use history of the Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) extends back in time thousands of years. Given the great length of time involved and the many culturally diverse communities--Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo-American--that have interacted with this place, it is not surprising that this history evidences tremendous technological and organizational variability in how people have used and constructed affiliations with the VCNP. Nonetheless, throughout this long history, the VCNP was, and continues to be, peripheral to major centers of residential settlement and areas of...

The purpose of this essay is to introduce an anthropological landscape approach. It considers landscape broadly as the physical and conceptual interaction of nature and culture rather than the sum of material modifications, which people might make to a particular geographic space. I suggest that cultural resource managers might find this perspective useful in the future when they consider how people of traditional and historical communities in the region construct and sustain their associations with the Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP). Using concepts developed by the U.S. Department...

The underlying premise of this discussion is that people contribute to conditions that warrant the restructuring and reorganization of their interactions with their physical settings, with other members of their communities, and with residents of other communities (see Anschuetz 1998b:31-82). People revise their existing tactics and strategies, or adopt altogether new policies, for earning their living. As they accommodate changes in their natural, economic, social, political, and ideational environments at one point in time, they invariably instigate change (Minnis 1985:19; Waddington...

The Southern High Plains of Texas (also known as the Llano Estacado) are in the southernmost subdivision of the High Plains section of the Great Plains Physiographic Province. Most of the Southern Great Plains is comprised of upland sites that were once grasslands dominated mostly by shortgrass plains that supported large herds of native buffalo. However, topographic diversity on the Southern High Plains is subtle and important: sandy soils were characterized by tall grass prairie or sand shinnery oak; major drainages (or draws) that cross the Southern High Plains from the northwest to the...

The importance of shrub species and shrubland ecosystems gained considerable impetus about 30 years ago with the establishment of the USDA Forest Service Shrub Sciences Laboratory and a series of workshops and symposia that preceded and accompanied the establishment of the Laboratory. Since that time, the Shrub Research Consortium and other forums have addressed various aspects of wildland shrub ecosystem biology and management. Shrubs occur in most vegetation types but are dominants only in those habitats that place plants under considerable stress. Three primary, often interacting...

The Llano Estacado, or Southern High Plains, has been a grassland throughout the Quaternary. The character of this grassland has varied through time, alternating between open, parkland, and savannah as the climate has changed. Different lines of evidence are used to reconstruct the climatic regimes and ecosystems, consisting of sediments and soils, vertebrate and invertebrate remains, phytolith and macrobotanical remains, isotope data, and radiocarbon ages. Binding or key indicator species throughout the late Pleistocene and Holocene are bison, pronghorn antelope, and prairie dog. Depending...