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Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico's National Preserve
Valles Caldera A Vision for New Mexico's National Preserve Author:William deBuys, Don J. Usner On July 14, 2000, President Clinton signed into law the Valles Caldera Preservation Act, a visionary piece of legislation establishing the process by which an 89,000-acre tract of privately owned ranchland in northern New Mexico's Jemez Mountains would be transerred to the federal government and managed for public use. For good reason, the Vall... more »es Caldera had already been the focus of intense public interest for decades: it is a land of superlatives. In beauty, productivity, ecological and geological significance, scientific interest, cultural importance, and in sheer magnificence, it is a landscape of the first rank. Its singularity began with the geological events that unfolded some 1.22 million years ago when the area became the scene of violent volcanic activity and subsequently formed a giant caldera, or collapsed volcano, in the present Jemez Mountains. Today the massive volcanic field is dormant but not extinct.« less