May 19—VALLES CALDERA — Layers of charcoal, gray and smoky white clouds shrouded the Jemez Mountains and tangled with ponderosa pine and Douglas fir as Jorge Silva-Bañuelos steered the Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck along a backcountry road at the Valles Caldera National Preserve.

The main entrance to the preserve, which sprawls across 89,000 acres inside a 14-mile-wide volcanic depression, is on N.M. 4, about 22 miles north of Jemez Springs.

Silva-Bañuelos, 43, is the preserve’s National Park Service superintendent. He recalled seeing Valles Caldera for the first time in 2007.

“When you turn that corner and see this expanse, it is like you left New Mexico and entered a new country,” he said. “I really appreciate the deep cultural history of this place. It has been drawing people for thousands of years. Thirty-eight tribes and pueblos recognize it as an ancestral homeland.”

This past Thursday, a bracingly cool and on-and-off rainy day, Silva-Bañuelos and his colleagues guided a tour of the preserve for members of the media, public information officers and tourism types. Lancing Adams, New Mexico’s acting Tourism Department secretary, was part of the company.

“We want to showcase what we’ve done here, get the word out about Valles Caldera,” Silva-Bañuelos said. “You say ‘Valles Caldera’ and some people don’t know what you are talking about.”

Just up ahead, elk scattered into the trees as the truck approached.

Embattled landscape

A tremendous volcanic eruption 1.2 million years ago created the large crater, or caldera, that is the preserve.

The park includes several grass valleys, the largest of which, Valle Grande, is just inside the main entrance.

Other park features include hot springs, natural gas seeps, streams and Redondo Peak, an 11,253-foot lava dome. The Jemez River runs through parts of the preserve.

Ranching — sheep and cattle — played a significant role in the preserve’s history. Livestock grazing, logging, wildfires and the runoffs and erosion that followed the fires have played havoc with Valles Caldera’s natural habitat. The burn scars of the 2011 Las Conchas and 2013 Thompson Ridge fires are scream-out-loud evident today.

In 1975, the National Park Service designated Valles Caldera a National Natural Landmark.

In 2000, the Valles Caldera Preservation Act created the Valles Caldera National Preserve and also the Valles Caldera Trust, which managed the preserve until it was transferred to the NPS, which took over administrative responsibility in October 2015.

Silva-Bañuelos said the Park Service’s mandate is to restore a landscape that was negatively impacted in the 20th century.

“We want to preserve, protect and restore and increase public access and recreation to serve as an economic driver in this region,” he said.

Cabins and coyotes

Thursday’s tour explored the physical features of the preserve as it is now and issues such as forest thinning and dealing with trespass cattle, but it was focused even more on plans for the future.

That starts right inside the main gate, where the intention is to reroute the road leading down to the park’s Entrance Station.

Jonathan Allbach, Valles Caldera’s facilities supervisor, said the idea is to create a more user friendly parking area at the Entrance Station.

He said a corral, that dates back to the park’s ranching days, will be removed to improve Entrance Station parking as well as the view into an area noted for its birds, elks and wildflowers.

West of the Entrance Station is the Cabin District, a collection of log cabins vital to ranching operations back in the day. One of those cabins is featured in the “Longmire” TV series.

And the story goes that the Granite Mountain Hotshots had been battling the Thompson Ridge Fire back from these cabins in 2013 when they were sent to Arizona to fight the Yarnell Hill Fire. Nineteen men in that hotshot crew were killed by that fire on June 30, 2013.

One of these cabins is now being used as a Ranger Station, which David Krueger, the preserve’s chief of interpretation, said will evolve into a more traditional visitor center capable of telling multiple stories about the Valles Caldera.

Krueger said the Valles Caldera Fall Festival, Oct. 5-13, will take place in the Cabin District and will include tribal artisans, food vendors serving up traditional Southwestern cuisine and speakers on various topics pertinent to the area.

Details are still being worked out on a July 5 night sky event, he said.

It’s late morning by this time, but the preserve’s coyotes can be heard singing in the distance.

Krueger said Valles Caldera coyotes don’t keep the same hours as most of their tribe.

Steaming and bubbling

Two new parking lots capable of accommodating 40 to 45 cars each are destined for the Cabin District.

People will be able to leave their cars here and hike, bike or ride horseback into backcountry. Right now, between May 15 and Nov. 15, 35 backcountry vehicle permits are issued daily, allowing people to drive 12 miles into that part of the preserve.

An automatic gate will be installed to allow pass holders to drive into the backcountry without getting out of their cars.

Allbach said crews have been working on backcountry roads to make them safer for low-clearance vehicles to navigate.

“We used to average about two busted oil pans a year,” he said. “Nothing takes away from a visitor experience like a busted oil pan.”

That’s not a problem for the preserve’s fleet, which has gone electric with vehicles such as Ford Lightnings and Chevrolet Silverado EVs. Even the park’s chainsaws, lawn mowers and weed wackers are electric.

“We are saving about 2,800 gallons of gasoline a year,” Silva-Bañuelos said.

At the wheel of his Lightning, Silva-Bañuelos is driving now through mud and the remnants of a hail storm as he makes his way to Sulfur Springs.

Until just a few years ago, Sulfur Springs was a 40-acre swath of privately-owned property inside the preserve. It’s a place of sulfuric-acid springs, steaming mudpots and algae and bacteria that live in a hot acidic pool.

There was a sulfur mine here in the early 1900s. Later, this place was operated as a health resort spa, but that burned down in the 1970s. Los Alamos National Laboratory put an experimental geothermal well on the site in the late ’80s.

The preserve bought the property, which has got a lot of steaming and bubbling going on, for $500,000 in 2020.

“The geothermal surface expressions here are unique in all of New Mexico,” Krueger said. “They are very rare in all the United States. You can find them at Yellowstone and some of the Hawaiian parks.”

Plans are to build a boardwalk around the mudpots and sulfur springs to make them more accessible to visitors who make their way here on foot, bike or horse.

Gotta love it

Badgers, black bears, bald and golden eagles, red-tailed hawks and chorus frogs live at the Valles Caldera National Preserve. Between 2,500 and 2,800 elk, the second largest herd in New Mexico, make their home at the park.

And Gunnison’s prairie dogs. Lots of prairie dogs.

As Silva-Bañuelos drove in through the main gate and down to the Entrance Station about 5:30 p.m., prairie dogs are spilling out of their underground quarters onto the road and into the Entrance Station parking lot. It’s no wonder the park’s coyotes don’t sleep during the day.

“There’s never a dull moment,” Silva-Bañuelos said. “That’s why I love it.”