Río Grande del Norte National Monument (Part 1)

The Río Grande del Norte National Monument encompasses over 310,729 acres of the Rio Grande Gorge and surrounding lands in northern New Mexico. At least 242,555 acres of the national monument is protected by the Bureau of Land Management as a unit of the National Landscape Conservation System. The Río Grande Gorge Visitor Center is in Pilar, NM outside of the Orilla Verde Recreation Area and the Wild Rivers Visitor Center is in the Wild Rivers Recreation Area near Questa, NM.

The landscape of the monument and the course of the Rio Grande through New Mexico were shaped by the Rio Grande Rift. This rift is the result of divergent tectonic forces stretching apart the continental plate below over the past 29-35 million years. The Rio Grande Rift starts in Colorado, splits New Mexico in half, and passes through Texas, before terminating in northern Mexico. In northern New Mexico, the rift is bordered by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east and the Tusas Mountains to the west. The Rio Grande Rift reaches a maximum depth of about 21,627 feet but its basins filled with soil and eroded sediment known as alluvium over millions of years. Although the rift is one of only four geologically active continental rifts in the world, its associated earthquakes are generally small tremors while volcanoes in the region have remained dormant for millions of years.

This Apache ceramic jar was recovered from the Orilla Verde Recreation Area. The Apache migrated to the Southwest by the 1500s and lived in the Taos area by 1700. They were known for their pottery and this jar was probably made sometime in the 18th or 19th century. The Jicarilla Apache Reservation was created west of Chama, NM in 1887.

The Orilla Verde Recreation Area in the southernmost portion of the monument is named for the Orilla Verde, Spanish for “Green Bank,” along the Rio Grande up to the Taos Junction Bridge.

The Río Grande del Norte National Monument covers parts of the Taos Plateau Volcanic Field, the largest volcanic field formed by the Rio Grande Rift. Although a few vents on the rhyolite-basalt plateau formed about 22 million years ago, most of the vents and lava flows are estimated to be between 1.8-4 million years old. Prominent volcanic peaks in the Taos Plateau Volcanic Field include Cerro de la Olla, Cerro del Aire, Cerro Montoso, Cerro Chiflo, and Ute Mountain, which at 10,093 feet is the highest peak entirely within the boundaries of the monument. San Antonio Mountain, the tallest peak in the field at 10,908 feet, only lies partially within the monument. Large springs in the Río Grande del Norte National Monument are thought to be the outflow of flooded lava tube systems. 

Snowmelt from the San Juan Mountains in Colorado feeds the headwaters of the Rio Grande, which travels south along the Rio Grande Rift until it veers southeast at El Paso, TX and flows towards the Gulf of Mexico. The 1,896-mile journey makes it the fourth longest river in North America. Over the last two to three million years, the Rio Grande eroded through layers of lava and ash in the Taos Plateau Volcanic Field known as the Servilleta Basalts to form the Rio Grande Gorge, which is approximately 50 miles long and 800 feet deep.

Archaeological evidence in the form of petroglyphs and the remains of stone tools found in the Río Grande del Norte National Monument confirms that Archaic people inhabited this area by 3000-2000 BCE. Many of the tools were made with stone quarried from San Antonio Mountain. Potsherds, projectile points, and pit house remains have also been found in the monument. By around 1100 CE, Ancestral Puebloans constructed permanent multi-room structures of adobe and stone called pueblos along the Rio Grande. Nearby Taos Pueblo was constructed as long as 1,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest continually occupied buildings in North America. By 1200 CE, Ancestral Puebloans installed water control systems to irrigate crops, which included corn, beans, and squash. In more recent history, the Jicarilla Apache, Ute, Navajo, Comanche, and peoples of Taos Pueblo and Picuris Pueblo inhabited the area.

The Pueblo and Navajo peoples had many names for the Rio Grande in their various languages. These include mets'ichi chena, which is Keresan for "Big River," posoge, which is Tewa for "Big River," paslápaane, which is Tiwa for "Big River," hañapakwa, which is Towa for "Great Waters, and Tó Baʼáadi, which is Navajo for "Female River." The Spanish also had several names for the river simply because they did not realize it was all one river system. They first named it the Río de las Palmas, or “River of the Palms,” for the palm trees that once grew in its delta. In Texas the river was called the Río Pecos, with Pecos derived from the Keresan term for the Pecos Pueblo. The upper portion of the river through New Mexico and Colorado was called the Río del Norte, or “River of the North.” Traders in Mexico named it the Río Conchos, or “Shell River,” for the fossils in the riverbed.

In 1598, Juan de Oñate y Salazar became the first colonial governor of the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, or “Holy Faith of New Mexico.” He led an expedition north from Santa Bárbara (Mexico) following Native American trade routes and the Río del Norte to establish the first permanent Spanish settlement in the northern territory. At first, the colonists camped by the Tewa pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh, which Oñate renamed San Juan de los Caballeros. The following year, the group moved into a nearby abandoned pueblo called Yunque, which was renamed San Gabriel de los Españoles.

The trail that the Oñate expedition forged along the Río del Norte to Ohkay Owingeh became El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, or “The Royal Road to the Interior Lands.” This 1,590-mile trail was the northernmost of the four primary "royal roads" connecting Mexico City to its major tributaries in Acapulco (Mexico), Veracruz (Mexico), Audiencia (Guatemala), and Santa Fe (NM). El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro saw heavy traffic for nearly 300 years until the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad was completed to El Paso in 1881, making the trail redundant.

By 1602, the Spanish adopted the name Río Bravo, or “Angry River” for the lower portion of the Rio Grande below its confluence with the Río Conchos. Río Bravo is the name that Mexico still uses for the river.

Outside of French explorers who came through the area in the 1690s, non-Spanish excursions in the region were rare because foreign traders would be imprisoned and have their possessions confiscated for crossing into Spanish territory.

In the 1700s, Spanish settlers in the Rio Grande Valley generally ranched, farmed, and hunted just enough to sustain their families and traded away any extra. Between roughly the 1720s to the 1820s, Comanches, Utes, Apaches, and Navajos traveled each fall to trade with the Spanish at the Taos Fair. The Native American groups would trade bison robes, dried meat, and horses to the Spanish for guns, knives, and blankets. The Taos Fair declined in the 1800s as Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and El Paso became the trading centers of the region.

In 1807, Zebulon Pike led the first formal American expedition to the region to map the southwestern corner of the Louisiana Purchase, but he and his 23 men would find themselves in a Spanish jail. In 1821, Mexico declared independence from Spain and lifted trade barriers with the United States. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and annexed New Mexico as a U.S. Territory.

During the 19th century, Americans settlers in South Texas called the river there the Rio Grande, Spanish for “Big River.” By the end of the century, this name referred to the entire length of the river in the United States.

In the late 1800s, Hispanic sheep herders used land within the monument seasonally. In 1879, the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad connected the upper Rio Grande Valley with Denver and Santa Fe, improving accessibility to the area. By 1918, about 15-20 families started homesteads on land within the monument but these were abandoned by 1933. The remains of many of these homesteads can still be seen around Cerro Montoso.

In 1959, the Rio Grande Gorge State Park was established to protect the gorge and river, preventing development within a two-mile strip on each side of the gorge over a length of 73 miles. In 1968, Congress passed the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to protect the free-flowing qualities of certain rivers with outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values. About 55.7 miles of the Rio Grande from the Colorado border to the Taos Junction Bridge and the lower four miles of the Red River were among the first group of eight river segments designated as National Wild and Scenic Rivers. In 1994, the designation was expanded south to include another 12.5 miles of the Rio Grande.

President Barack Obama proclaimed the area as the Río Grande del Norte National Monument on March 25, 2013. In 2019, the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act designated a combined 21,540 acres of the monument as federal wilderness, with the Rio San Antonio Wilderness in the northwest corner and the Cerro del Yuta Wilderness in the northeast corner. The monument provides a critical wildlife corridor between the San Juan Mountains and Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Perhaps the most dramatic view of the Rio Grande Gorge can be seen by the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.