National Park Service Wants to Buy Jemez Springs Headquarters – Appeals to Trump Administration for Funds
Since 2000, the Valles Caldera National Preserve has been managed from rented buildings in Jemez Springs that belong to a Catholic organization. Recently that organization, the Servants of the Paraclete, have offered to sell the buildings and 2,100 acres of land to the US Government. The NPS has teamed up with the US Forest Service with a proposal to buy the property to benefit the American people.
The property includes a large swath of land going up both sides of the canyon above the group of buildings where the VCNP administration resides. (This is very close to Jemez State Monument, a Puebloan archeological site.) It includes some Jemez River frontage which would be open to the public once the property becomes publicly owned. The National Park Service would own the land on the valley floor with the buildings, while the steeper sides of the canyon part of the property would go to the US Forest Service to be included in the Jemez National Recreation Area.
For both agencies, buying this property would be a good thing. The Park Service has faced uncertainty when the current owners had varying plans for the property. If the NPS owned the area with the buildings, they could modify them to better suit their needs, build housing for staff, add facilities and open the river area to people wanting to fish or swim or sit and enjoy the river’s song.
The NPS and US Forest Service propose to use federal Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars for the purchase. The New Mexico Congressional Delegation, the Sandoval County Commission, and the Village of Jemez Springs have all written to National Park Service Deputy Director David Vela and U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen asking the administration to approve and allocate funding for the purchase.
Caldera Action will write a letter to the administration urging funding for the land purchase. The NPS needs a complex of buildings for their offices and for a future science and education center, and no other known property in the area meets these needs.
Jemez Pueblo Alarmed by Influx of Potentially Contagious Public
The economic lifeline of the Valles Caldera region is Highway 4 as it threads up from Jemez Pueblo, through Jemez Springs and into the upper Jemez Mountains. Highway 4 goes through Jemez Pueblo and was built through their village without their consent in 1938.
Recently, many people are driving to the Jemez, escaping the confines of the stay-at-home orders related to the Covid19 disease. Jemez Pueblo sees an increase in traffic and officials are worried that the public could spread disease to Pueblo members. Already nearby Zia and Santa Ana Pueblos are reeling from many Covid19 cases in their communities.
Jemez Pueblo leaders have been concerned about increasing traffic through their village on the highway for years. People speed, run over people, dogs and livestock, invade the privacy of residents and the noise intrudes on daily life. As the population of Albuquerque grows, more people escape to the Jemez through the Pueblo. The problem will only get worse over time.
Starting in about 2007, Jemez Pueblo asked the State of New Mexico and the federal government to help them fund a five-mile-long bypass road around their village. The road would thread through the hills east of the Pueblo and rejoin Highway 4 near the Walatowa Visitor Center. Yet even with New Mexico’s Congressional delegation pressing for the road, along with county leaders, the State of New Mexico has failed to fund the project. Pueblo leaders have threatened to bulldoze the highway in their village or put toll booths on it to raise money for the bypass.
Caldera Action sympathizes with the Pueblo’s concerns and shares the vision for an alternate route for the public to access the Jemez Mountains. We ask that the State address the needs of the Jemez Pueblo community in these difficult times.
Caldera Action wrote a letter to Governor Michele Lujan Grisham on April 29th about the Pueblo bypass.
