Capulin Volcano National Monument (Part 2)

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the area as Capulin Mountain National Monument on August 9, 1916. Congress later amended the name to Capulin Volcano National Monument in 1987. 

Capulin Volcano was considered prime grazing land by local ranchers in the early 20thcentury. One of these ranchers was Jessie Foote Jack, who was married to Captain William Howard Jack, president of the Crowfoot Cattle Company and member of the New Mexico Cattle Sanitary Board. After William died in 1916, Jessie took on his responsibilities and used his political connections to become the first custodian for the monument, gaining sole grazing rights on the volcano. She carried out the duties of this position from 1916-1921 as the second female custodian of a U.S. protected area after only Edna Townsley Pinkley, who served as custodian at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument for about eight months in 1914-1915. Jessie Foote Jack, however, became the first female custodian in the National Park Service, which was founded in 1916.

By 1921, Jessie Foote Jack was spending large amounts of time away to help her ailing mother and she asked Homer Farr to take over as the unofficial custodian of the monument. Farr was a "one man Chamber of Commerce" for the nearby village of Capulin as he owned a lumber business, ran a newspaper, served as postmaster, speculated in real estate, and did anything he could to lure settlers and tourists, which is why he was entrusted with stewardship of the monument. In 1923, Farr was appointed as the official custodian of the monument by the National Park Service and he served in this capacity until 1955.

Early visitors to the monument needed to park their wagons at the base of the volcano and hike to the top, which many were physically unable to do. In 1925, Homer Farr secured two thousand dollars in funding that he used towards building a road that spiraled up to the rim of the volcano. He drove the first car to the top later that year. In 1933, Farr had a Civil Works Project approved for the monument and he led a group of 24 men in repairing the road and widening the parking area at the top. The crater rim shelter was completed after Farr retired in 1955. Between 1961-1963, retaining walls were installed along the road, trails were repaired, water, sewer, and phone lines were started, and the visitor center and two residences were completed. In 1987, the most recent retaining walls were constructed and the road was paved.

It is not certain why volcanic fields formed across New Mexico but many volcanic features are found in a northeast running line called the Jemez Lineament. It is hypothesized that the Jimez Lineament may be an outlet for magma produced as the Rio Grande Rift stretches apart the tectonic plate below.

This paper explains and illustrates the differences between composite or stratovolcanoes, cinder cone volcanoes, and shield volcanoes.

These are all rocks ejected from volcanoes during eruptions that are classified according to their size. Ash is less than 2 mm in diameter, cinders are 2-64 mm in diameter, and volcanic bombs are greater than 64 mm in diameter. Capulin Volcano is composed primarily of cinders.

Cinders and volcanic bombs are named according to the shape they take as they cool, which is determined by the fluidity of the magma.  

Capulin Volcano Visitor Center contains a touch table of different cinders and volcanic bombs.

George McJunkin was a former slave who became the ranch foreman of the Crowfoot Cattle Company. In 1908, while checking the fence line after a flood, he spotted the bones of ancient bison (Bison Antiquus). It took many years before scientists could be convinced to investigate the site but the Colorado Museum of Natural History excavated it in 1926. They discovered stone projectile points intermingled with the ancient bison ribs, indicating that the animals were hunted by humans. Since ancient bison went extinct about 10,000 years ago, this confirmed the existence of humans in North America many millennia earlier than previously thought. The site of the discovery is now known as the Folsom Site, named after nearby Folsom, NM.

These three brands used by George McJunkin form the symbol KEL.

The ancient bison (Bison antiquus) is an extinct bison species that lived in North America at least 60,000 years ago until about 10,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. The species was first described in 1852 by Joseph Mellick Leidy, who named it Bison antiquus, which literally means “ancient wild ox” in Latin. The Ancient bison was about 15-25% larger than modern bison, reaching 7.4 feet tall and 15 feet long, with a maximum weight of 3,501 pounds and an average weight of about 1,800 pounds. Its horns averaged about 2.85 feet from tip to tip but could reach up to 3.5 feet. The first bison in North America were steppe bison (Bison priscus) that migrated from Siberia into Alaska via the Bering Land Bridge around 240,000 years ago. Over time, the steppe bison evolved into long-horned bison (Bison latifrons) which then evolved into ancient bison. Modern American bison (Bison bison) are believed to be either directly descended from ancient bison or the result of a hybridization between ancient bison and Bison occidentalis. Extinct bison are so abundant in the fossil record that they are considered indicator fossils, or fossils whose presence give an indication of geological time, specifically marking the Rancholabrean North American Land Mammal Age (240,000 to 11,000 years ago).