Driving north of Taos and Tres Piedras, New Mexico, and headed toward the Colorado line, I’d seen the sign for Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, but I’d never turned off. Now in July loaded with food, water, camping gear and my canine companion Fiona, we moved east onto the sprawling Taos Plateau. Clouds were our only companions.
I had filled my fuel tank miles before in Chama and as I drove off the highway onto a one-lane track slipping through sagebrush, I wondered how long it would take to reach Taos. I had the time, but did I have the gas? Under the slim shade of a kiosk the Bureau of Land Management national monument map showed that the monument sprawled on both sides of U.S. Highway 285. Spanish place names echoed across the map, but my New Mexico Road & Recreation Atlas listed everything in English. It took a minute to realize that Cerro del Aire was the same as Wind Mountain.
As I looked to the east with storm clouds rising above the Sangre de Cristo Range, I thought of traversing this country on foot like the Pueblos had or on horseback like the Jicarilla Apache and the Utes. Ute Mountain stood in the distance at 10,093 feet rising above Cerro del Yuta Wilderness, and though I was at 7,000 feet on the wide-open plateau, somewhere below me the Rio Grande had carved an 800 foot gorge after patiently inching downward through volcanic basalt. Somewhere was a river, but as far as I could see there was nothing but sagebrush, tiny flowers and one surprised pronghorn that crossed my route.
Fiona and I were absolutely alone. I felt a little nervous, but she just placed her head on her paws and napped. We drove east on the long sweeping skirts of San Antonio Mountain, a prime elk herd destination in summer’s heat. Average speed on the rough cobbles was under 20 mph. I had sought a road less traveled and I found one. Small road signs labeled TP or Taos Plateau were few and at critical intersections, absent.
As summer afternoon clouds gathered behind me to the west, I’m glad I had not picked up the BLM’s Map and Guide to Rio Grande del Norte. I might have reversed course had I read that across the 242,500-acre national monument, “There are a few segments that are accessed by maintained gravel roads. The Taos Plateau, on the other hand, is accessed only by a few dirt tracks that are not maintained. High clearance and four-wheel drive is strongly recommended ... summer rains can make even the better routes slippery and treacherous.” Ignorance was bliss. After a while, my dog and I were committed.
We bounced down the single track, no point in turning back. I kept scanning the sky until I realized a huge dark cloud hovered just out of sight of my rearview mirror. Stepping from the truck I could see the squall line and smell rain. Ruts showed how the clay soil turns to slick mud. I wanted an adventure and it looked like we were going to have one.
All of the plateau had been heavily grazed by sheep led by Basque and New Mexican sheepherders. Fire scars wreathed the smaller mountains though I saw no marked trails. I wondered about the loneliness of the herders out there with a horse, a few dogs and a band of 1,000 or more sheep, but I saw no woollies, only a scattering of cows. Thankfully, the rain held off.
Abandoned homesteads and historic corrals dotted the landscape with plenty of unmarked spur roads. A cabin with a commanding view of the Sangres had only one window facing east, and a south-facing door hinged with the remnants of a leather saddle strap. The sagebrush opened up at the cabin and corral, and I wanted to stay, camp and watch stars come out, but I had a few more hours of daylight. Common sense told me to keep driving until I found more gravel in the roadbed and shallower ruts. Fiona agreed and we drove on with storms to the west in the San Juans and blue-black clouds east over the Sangres. Wind that night almost folded our tent up with the two of us inside it, but my pup and I stayed dry as the full blast of the low pressure zone moved east.
The next day we transitioned off the plateau and down to the river itself, hiking Vista Verde Trail between the river and the rim with an occasional buzzing hummingbird and the slow, leisurely drift of monarch butterflies. The sound of the river returned to silence as I stepped away from the rim’s edge and the Taos Box below me, classic rock-choked white water only for the best of determined kayakers and boaters. At Taos Junction Bridge, erected in 1930, the river calmed into smooth flatwater suitable for safe floats on inner tubes and family fun. Unlike on the Taos Plateau, there were numerous signed trails and each trail had a plaque explaining which youth corps built it.
I camped near the historic and vital confluence of the Rio Grande with the Rio Pueblo de Taos and in the morning hiked the Orilla Verde or The Slide Trail. I learned about the successful reintroduction of 33 river otters released into the Rio Pueblo cloaked in willows and tall grasses. Gone for 60 years, the playful otters are now keystone predators living up and down northern New Mexican drainages, including the Rio Chama, the Red River and north all the way to Ute Mountain on the Colorado border.
The 6-mile stretch from the Taos Junction Bridge to Pilar, New Mexico, is a well-known bird migration route and offers several campgrounds. In the 1700s near where I had hiked, Comanches and Jicarilla Apaches had pastured their horses. Oral traditions are deep along the Rio Grande, as deep as the gorge itself, with ancient memories passed on by Taos and Picuris Pueblo elders.
On a rocky bench near the confluence, an ill-fated gold mining dredge operation using diesel power had been short-lived in 1933. Only the stone foundations remain. One wall feature of mixed cobbles is only a dozen yards from an ancient basalt boulder covered with atatl petroglyphs from a thousand years ago. That night we waited for rain that didn’t come. Fiona and I packed our tent in the morning and in Taos I met Eric Valencia, the national monument manager.
“I’m excited about it. It’s a new position,” he told me with a firm handshake. “The monument was carved out of public lands in the Taos field office. The proclamation explains why it was set aside. Histories are a big part of traditional use.”
In northern New Mexico there had been little opposition to the 2013 proclamation by President Barack Obama. The process had been locally driven. Valencia gave me a copy and I read, “This ... landscape of extreme beauty and daunting harshness is known as the Rio Grande del Norte, and its extraordinary array of scientific and historic resources offers opportunities to develop our understanding of the forces that shaped northern New Mexico, including the diverse ecological systems and human cultures that remain present today.”
I asked the manager what he thought of the vast monument now under his supervision. He smiled and said that like other National Conservation Lands it is, “an unknown gem. When you think of recreation, no one thinks of the BLM.”
Obama proclaimed Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. Now President Donald Trump may open it up for oil, gas and minerals. Under the Biden administration, Back Country Hunters and Anglers received a five-year, $2.5 million grant to use volunteers to inventory, modify and remove fences hampering wildlife. More than 50 volunteers had improved 37.5 square miles of public land, but under the Trump administration that federal money is currently frozen.
On my trip I didn’t see any eagles, coyotes or red foxes that are listed in the proclamation. Worried about rain and slick roads, I missed the World War I homesteaders’ settlement near the tree-clad slopes of Cerro Montoso. Brass buttons have been found from the soldiers’ uniforms, but their postwar community only exists in archives with “brass uniform buttons (as) evidence of the veterans who once made their homes on this rugged land.” The monument protects a natural and cultural landscape only lightly settled over thousands of years.
Public lands unite us. Hopefully, Rio Grande del Norte National Monument will resist any changes or incursions.
Andrew Gulliford is an award-winning author and editor and a professor of history at Fort Lewis College. He can be reached at gulliford_a@fortlewis.edu.
