SILVER CITY, N.M. (KRQE) – Hundreds of thousands of acres of land in New Mexico are celebrating a birthday of sorts. In 1924, on June 3, the U.S. government designated 755,000 acres as a “wilderness” area. It was the world’s first designated wilderness area, and now it is celebrating its 100th anniversary.
“Wilderness is really considered the highest form of protection for public lands anywhere in the world,” says Luke Koenig, the Gila grassroots organizer for New Mexico Wild. “And that idea – that we should have this special kind of designation – started right here in southwest New Mexico, 100 years ago.”
“So, 100 years ago, visionary ecologist and forester Aldo Leopold had this really radical idea. And this idea was, what if we just kind of took this hands off approach and we really let nature lead the way? And that’s the whole idea behind the wilderness.”
The exact shape of the wilderness area has changed since then, with the administration of the land being split into several ranger districts. Part of the original footprint was also renamed the Aldo Leopold Wilderness. But beyond that, not too much has changed. And that’s exactly the point.
“So, that means no road building, no motorized equipment, no mechanized travel, and really, all management actions are supposed to be taken with the utmost restraint,” Koenig explains. “That was a really, really novel idea 100 years ago, and it’s still radical today.”
A shared history
While the official wilderness designation goes back 100 years, the land and its role in shaping humans goes back much further. This unique bit of New Mexico landscape was shaped around 50 to 25 million years ago when volcanic eruptions built up thick layers of volcanic tuff, ash that is compressed into a relatively soft stone.
That volcanic landscape, and the resulting presence of hot springs and rivers, brought life – plant, animal, and human. More than 6,000 years ago, Paleoindians may have ventured in the Gila area (the U.S. Forest Service says limited evidence has been found in a few areas). People used natural caves for shelter, as evidenced by soot deposits. About 700 years before us, the landscape was adapted and re-imaged by people archaeologists describe as the Mogollon Culture. They used the soft volcanic cliffs to create homes and a community, now designated as the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.
Those homes were eventually left empty, as time marched on for the Gila landscape. The occupants spread out to eventually create pueblos across modern New Mexico. And new people swept in.
The streams and volcanic rocks lured the eager to seek gold on and within the Gila landscape. Others came to graze their livestock or till the soil in the area. Photos from the time show homesteaders in impossibly small homes, presumably tired workers drilling rock by hand, and horses eventually phased out for early automobiles.
The Forest Service, still a relatively new agency by the turn of the century, was overseeing the landscape as trees were cut for timber and grass was munched (by cows) for grazing. Soon, the Forest Service’s responsibility increased, when one Forest Service employee, Aldo Leopold, pushed for preservation. Leopold had help, of course, with community support.
Part of the community
Now, the Gila Wilderness continues to have a symbiotic relationship with the community. In addition to the Forest Service, local environmental groups act as protectors of the land. And in return, the land provides unparalleled access to the outdoors.
“It’s certainly open to hiking to hunting to fishing to rafting and the recreation opportunities found in the wilderness are really a part of what makes it really unique and special, the opportunity to be miles away from the road, the opportunity to experience real solitude and real quiet. Those opportunities are incredibly rare today, and we’re just incredibly fortunate to have places like Gila Wilderness that preserve the opportunity to have those experiences,” Koenig says.
Animals benefit from the wilderness too. The Gila is paramount to the decades-long effort to reintroduce wolves to New Mexico.
“Mexican gray wolves, they are a critically endangered species. They were extirpated from the area sometime in about the early to mid-20th century, and they were reintroduced in 1998. There are approximately 240 today,” Koenig says. “They need really, tremendously large swaths of habitat in order to thrive and be successful. That’s something that we have in the [Gila] Wilderness, something we have in these large, roadless areas. And wolves, they’re keystone species. So, many other species depend on their presence. And having them in the ecosystem really provides the basis for all this other ecosystem health and lots of ecosystem function.”
Celebrate, but don’t stop working
The Gila is a magical place that’s worth celebrating. And the community is doing just that. A series of events is on the schedule for the summer. But Koenig says that the work to protect the Gila isn’t done.
“What we’re celebrating, really, is the fact that folks had the courage to stand up and address this changing world and put these creative and bold systems in place that would preserve a wildness in our backyards into the future, and a lot has changed over the last 100 years.”
“We’re very thankful to have this 500,000-acre roadless area that’s home to all these remarkable creatures, incredible biodiversity, an amazing landscape. But what we’ve also learned is that a wilderness designation alone is really no longer adequate to protect from all of the threats and pressures that wild places face today.”
For New Mexico Wild, a key threat is the damming of waterways. And they want to make sure the Gila River remains free to flow.
“Since the Gila Wilderness was first designated in 1924, we’ve witnessed, as a nation, the height of the dam-building era. And in New Mexico alone, there are over 400 major dams today affecting the majority of the state’s rivers,” Koenig says. “In New Mexico, there’s only one remaining undammed main stem river, and that’s the Gila River. And even today, in 2024, the Gila River is still without permanent protections to its free-flowing state.”
The concern is that without official, permanent protections – protections like the ones shaped 100 years ago – future developers could decide to alter the Gila River. New Mexico Wild has taken up where Aldo Leopold, and countless conservationists and community members since, have left off.
“What a lot of community members have been advocating for a long time – and what we also are advocating for at New Mexico Wild – is to get a ‘wild and scenic’ designation in place for the Gila River, which would permanently prevent it from ever being dammed.”
That type of federal designation grew out of the legacy of legal protections the Gila Wilderness initially sparked. “Wild and scenic” protections grew out of the momentum created by Aldo Leopold in an expansion of laws in the 1960s.
“It’s really the best tool we have to protect our precious few remaining free-flowing rivers. So there have been four attempts to dam or divert the Gila since the 1960s. Fortunately, they’ve all been unsuccessful because of community members that have stood up to defend the Gila River,” Koenig says. Federal protection “would be an opportunity for us to stop playing defense every 10 or 20 years.”
No matter what, enjoy it
Whether you’ve never stepped into a wilderness area, or you’ve been advocating for federal protections for decades, Koenig says the best way to better understand the issues surrounding land management in the Gila Wilderness is to simply come for a visit.
“It all starts there. I think developing a relationship with the Gila is a tremendous first step in terms of realizing why it’s such an important, special, unique, rare place worthy of protection,” Koenig says. “I highly encourage anybody – especially this year, in this centennial year of the Gila Wilderness – to take the opportunity to visit it, and enjoy the fact that folks have set it aside and put these systems in place to protect it, to allow us to enjoy it today.”
*Editor’s Note: Information for this story was compiled from the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and New Mexico Tech.
