The New Mexico Bootheel

Sunrise at Granite Gap, just north of the Bootheel, with the Pyramid Mountains in the background.

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I scoured Mountain Project (an online crowd-sourced rock-climbing guide) before moving to Southern New Mexico in 2023, hoping to find climbing areas near Silver City. There are a few, but Granite Gap near the “Bootheel,” the southward protrusion of New Mexico that borders Arizona and Chihuahua, Mexico, sounded especially intriguing because of its obscurity, even though the climbing wasn’t very tempting. The Mountain Project reporter noted that: 

“Much of the rock is dubious…This is a primitive desert environment where it seems every plant and animal is hostile. Cactus everywhere and huge rattlesnakes. Sounds great heh?”

Though bouldering with fat rattlesnakes and cactus spine landings didn’t appeal, empty desert along the Mexican border did, and I looked forward to exploring and photographing this unknown (to me) piece of New Mexico. Web searches revealed few images except for those by Continental Divide Trail hikers on the first few days of their northbound treks, taken as they slogged across shadeless desert, drinking from cattle troughs to get to Lordsburg and then the Gila National Forest, where the trail becomes less stark. A few people have documented tiny towns and mining ruins, but images are scarce, prompting dreams of unique photo opportunities, rare in a world so awash in imagery.

A cholla flower at Granite Gap, where the coarse soil supports a lusher vegetation than in much of the Bootheel.

Sotol flowers at Granite Gap.

Technically, Granite Gap is a little north of the Bootheel, though everything south of Lordsburg is usually lumped in. The Bootheel itself isn’t small, covering about 1,500 square miles, but that’s a tiny fraction of the area of New Mexico, and with a population density of about one person per square mile, most living around a few tiny towns (Animas, Cotton City, Hatchita, Rodeo) between mountain ranges, there’s a lot of empty country. But much of the land is private or inaccessible. 

An old saloon and its mural in the small town of Hatchita. Hatchita and the ruins of old Hatchita were mining towns. Now CDT hikers stop at the Hatchita store to refresh on their way north or south.

The Cotton City Grocery and Laundromat. 

The Diamond A Ranch, one of largest ranches in the Bootheel, is committed to conservation and cooperates with the Nature Conservancy but doesn’t allow public access, even forcing the CDT to be rerouted around their holdings and causing controversy due to locked gates on county roads which are supposed to be open to all. Some of the prominent mountain ranges (Big Hatchets, Alamo Huecos, Peloncillos) in the Bootheel include large Wilderness Study Areas but are difficult or impossible to access, while others (Animas, San Luis) are mostly private and off-limits. That’s a lot of intriguing country that is out-of-bounds for most of us.

Beth and Steve Buskirk and Ellen hiking in the Southern Peloncillo Mountains. Access to parts of the Peloncillos is blocked by the Diamond A and other private land holdings.

Despite the harsh arid environment, the Bootheel was home to indigenous people for thousands of years. I’ve read journal articles describing archaeological sites all over the area, many along the margins of playas that were presumably a source of water or in the foothills where water was also more abundant. On one trip, armed with waypoints gleaned from archaeological site descriptions, I tried to visit some of these pre-contact sites but was stopped every time by locked gates or No Trespassing signs. 

A cattle guard at the entrance to a road leading out onto a playa (dry lakebed) in the Bootheel.

More recently, Geronimo, the Apache military leader, surrendered in 1886 to Lt. Charles Gatewood near Skeleton Canyon in the Peloncillo Mountains before being shipped to Florida to join other Apache prisoners. He died a prisoner of war in Ft. Sill, Kansas in 1909. A stone monument to his surrender west of the entrance to Skeleton Canyon incorporates matates once used to grind corn or mesquite pods, but that end of the canyon is blocked by private land, requiring long hot hikes to access it from the east or south. The title of David Roberts' book, Once They Moved Like the Wind, about Geronimo and the Apache wars, evokes the freedom Apache and other indigenous people enjoyed before ranchers and miners claimed the land for themselves.

A storm over the Chiricahua Mountains looking west into Arizona from near Skeleton Canyon.

Part of Mexico until the Gadsen Purchase in late-1853, the Bootheel and southern Arizona were the last significant addition of land to the contiguous United States. The $10 million purchase facilitated a southern transcontinental railroad between the South and the West Coast. This was before the Civil War, but southerners, including Gadsen, feared that without a southern railroad line, the North would benefit disproportionately from trade. Events leading to the purchase were complicated, but the result was the addition of close to 30,000 square miles of territory to the U.S. extending from near Las Cruces to the California border and incorporation Tucson, Yuma, and other important southwestern cities.

Sunset looking westward across country added to the U.S. by the Gadsen Purchase of 1853.

Today, the Bootheel is a hotspot for illegal immigration despite Trump’s wall and the heavy presence of the Border Patrol. In the Southern Peloncillos, I’ve seen border agents on horseback, rifles in scabbards, riding into the hills like a posse from the Old West to track immigrants. Border Patrol pickup trucks drag tires along road margins and fencelines, smoothing the dirt so that fresh footprints can be detected and followed. Camping near the border is said to be dangerous, and there are occasional incidents with smugglers moving people or drugs.

Water and juice perhaps left for immigrants in a chapel in Hatchita.

So, the Bootheel is an interesting and complicated place, but despite a half-dozen driving trips and a few exploratory hikes, I’ve seen little of it and photographed even less, mostly without much success. In the wide-open desert, it’s hard to find ways to anchor a 35 mm frame. The morning sun bursts over the horizon, transforming the Borderlands in minutes from soft to glaring light. Sunsets linger a little longer but are also fleeting, and the sky is often cloudless, less visually interesting than when storms sweep through, rarer during weak monsoons like I’ve experienced since moving to New Mexico. In summer, the Bootheel bakes in the sun and temperatures are often over 100 degrees, discouraging outdoor adventure. Still, the lure of obscurity is strong, and there is a lot of exploring to be done, particularly in the mountains. With work, these ranges can surely be accessed, even while we can no longer move through them like the wind.

A sofa in the living room of an abandoned house in Hatchita.

Seating (for funerals??) in the Cottonwood Cemetery along the Geronimo Trail in the Southern Peloncillo Mountains.

A sluggish Gila Monster at Granite Gap in November 2024.

A cowboy hat at a church in Hatchita.

The view southeast into the Bootheel from the ruins of Old Hatchita (now abandoned), a mining town.

Chiricahua Storm

Storm over the Chiricahua Mountains viewed from the New Mexico Bootheel.

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Southern New Mexico has been in drought since we moved from Wyoming over two years ago. In normal years, the Arizona monsoon brings summer storms, blocking the sun and cooling temperatures. Even then, this is a sunny place, so it's exciting when rains come as they have over the last few days thanks to two low-pressure systems that swept from the California coast across the Southwest and then into the Plains. After rain, locals check their rain gauges and send texts to each other. It can feel almost competitive.

“How much did you get??” 

“We got 0.7 inches. How about you?” 

The sunshine is nothing to complain about, especially for those of us who love the arid West. For most of us, sunny skies and expansive vistas beat the dreary gray and oppressive undergrowth of more humid places. 

Photographically, startling clear blue skies are less interesting than dramatic storms or even well-spaced summer cumuli, so I was excited last weekend while driving home from visiting friends in Bisbee, Arizona when a storm engulfed the Chiricahua Mountains of Southern Arizona. By then, we were in New Mexico’s bootheel, looking west at the mountains where the sun poked through the clouds just enough to highlight a few places in the landscape. It was spectacular, and I stopped to shoot a few photos over the barbed wire fence beside the highway. 

Roadside view. 

The big picture.

Moody version of the storm

Northern New Mexico Exploring

The Penitente Morada in Abiquiu, built in the 1700s but restored more recently. 

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New Mexico is the fifth largest state in the U.S., behind Alaska, Texas, California, and Montana (Wyoming is 10^th). I’ve lived in Silver City for not quite two years and have barely begun learning the geography during local excursions (link, link, link), a short trip to east central New Mexico, and a little exploring in the Farmington area in the northwest (Bisti Badlands, Navajo archaeology, etc.). The area north and west of Santa Fe, with its long history and classic adobe architecture beckoned, and my friend Ed Sherline suggested meeting to have a look around. He’d planned a point-to-point bikepacking trip from Cumbres Pass, on the Colorado border, to Bandelier, south of Los Alamos, and needed someone to help shuttle his car, so I agreed to do that after a few days of photography. 

If you search “northern vs. southern New Mexico” online, there are reports of a friendly rift, with northerners certain that theirs is the prettiest part of the state and southerners countering with its more subtle charms. That’s a little like arguing whether Led Zeppelin is better than the Beatles (we all know the answer, right?? right?). Northerners cite the alpine terrain and the rich cultural heritage and art scene. Southerners point to White Sands and Carlsbad (and mild winters), though for me the remote desert “sky islands” and abundant archaeology are equally compelling. 

As it turned out, we chose one of the hottest weeks of the summer to be out, with triple-digit temperatures in the lowlands driving us onto the Los Alamos plateau to camp under ponderosa pines and limiting our functional time to early mornings. Despite pre-dawn starts, we were seldom in the right place in time to catch good light. We visited Espanola, Abiquiu, the Ghost Ranch, and Taos, drove a few back roads, met a mud adobe artist, did a spur-of-the-moment ascent of Wheeler Peak, New Mexico’s high point, swam in the Chama River, and ate a few good meals, but we didn’t get any great photographs. The summer light was harsh, and by mid-morning it was too hot to wander far from the car.

One hopes for a few “keepers” on photos excursions, but it doesn’t always pan out that way. The trips are still fun, though, and usually you find places worth returning to in different light or different seasons. Each fills in another piece of geography, and as your mental map grows, so do ideas about where to go next.

 

A lanky coyote plods along in 100+ degree heat in the Bosque del Apache.

The abandoned San Antonio depot south of Albuquerque. 

Cave dwelling, Frijoles Canyon, Bandelier National Monument. 

Volcanic rock formations, Frijoles Canyon, Bandelier National Monument.

Fruit stand, Rio Grande Gorge.

Theater, Espanola, New Mexico.

Crosses and shadows, Abiquiu, New Mexico.

Wooden cross, Abiquiu cemetery.

Cross with beads, Abiquiu cemetery.

Metal cross, El Rito, New Mexico.

Pigs (for sale?). La Cuchilla, New Mexico.

Bisti Badlands, New Mexico

 

Ellen on a walk in the Bisti Badlands.

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The term "badlands" sounds harsh, but barren eroding landscapes have been called that for centuries. Here in New Mexico, craggy lava flows, though not erosional, are called malpaises (bad country or bad places). French trappers called badlands les mauvaises terre a traverser, meaning “bad lands to traverse,” perhaps the origin of the English term. The trappers were probably influenced by the Lakota (according to Wikipedia), who called these places mako sica (bad or eroded land). Regardless of language, it’s not hard to understand why landscapes nearly devoid of vegetation and animal life might have been considered “bad” if you needed to find dinner or get across them on a hot day.

But it’s all relative. If I were a French trapper, or Lakota, or a Spanish conquistador, or even a modern farmer (or an antelope), I might find the term appropriate, but as a wanderer camping in empty places with my camera, badlands doesn’t ring true. I’ve had some pretty good times in some pretty bad lands. 

Badlands National Park, by virtue of being a park, is probably the most recognized badlands site in the U.S., but it’s one among many equally spectacular places. If you saw the movie, Nomadland, you’ll remember that Fern, played by Francis McDormand, spent time working at a campground near the South Dakota Park and found herself calmed by its beauty, though she eventually moved on, as nomads do. Ellen and I visited colorful badlands in Oregon in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument on our first road trip after retiring in 2021 before moving on ourselves to float the John Day River in our packrafts.

Ellen in the Painted Hills at the John Day Fossil Beds, Oregon.

Wyoming’s Red Desert, where I spent lots of time before moving south, has national park quality badlands, though wilderness protection might be more appropriate for these remote places. The Honeycomb Buttes in the northern Red Desert and the Adobe Town and Skull Rims farther south are spectacular and little-visited, at least compared to the South Dakota badlands. I once camped on the Adobe Town rim with Ellen and Bei and discovered a family of coyotes with pups denned in an eroded hole just below our camp. They seemed undisturbed by us, maybe remote enough not to have been harassed by humans. On a hot day during another Adobe Town trip, I found a soapstone medicine pipe in the cool shade of a rock tower. 

A wash below the Skull rim in Wyoming.

New Mexico, where I live now, has more than its share of badlands. I’m just beginning to learn about them and have only recently begun to explore. Some of the most well-known, are the Bisti (pronounced Bist-eye, not Bist-eee) Badlands south of Farmington. The Bisti are part of the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area surrounded by Navajo, BLM, and private lands. In recent years they’ve gotten increasing attention, probably because their weird erosional formations attract photographers, but when we were there in April (2025), despite a surprising number of campers in the main parking area, we mostly had the place to ourselves as we wandered among hoodoos, “cracked eggs,” and petrified wood. 

A downside of the term “badlands” is that some think that they are literally bad, with little value except perhaps for oil and gas drilling or other destructive activities. This, of course, is not the case. Badlands are beautiful and unique, deserving of preservation.

Early morning in the Bisti Badlands.

Bisti Badlands.

Bisti Badlands erosion.

There are a few hardy shrubs in the badlands.

Formations known as the stone wings in the Bisti Badlands.

The nearby Angel Peak area is also vast and eroded.

Public Lands Threatened

Sunset in the Potrillo Mountains, part of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in New Mexico.

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In late February, Ellen and I hiked into Aravaipa Canyon in the heart of Arizona’s Aravaipa Wilderness (BLM). A clear stream, unusual in the desert, flowed beneath cottonwood trees, leafed out to gather early-season Arizona sunshine. We disturbed a coati in one of them—it crept slowly to the ground and disappeared surprisingly quickly and a little comically into riparian vegetation. After a fun day of walking and exploring, we set up our tent under volcanic cliffs beside the stream and enjoyed miso soup, freeze-dried dinners, shortbread cookies, and a warm quiet evening under bright stars.

Volcanic cliffs above a side canyon in the Aravaipa Wilderness photographed during a February backpacking trip.

In mid-February, we car-camped with friends on the rim of the Kilbourne Hole, a volcanic maar crater in a remote part of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. We’d spent the day finding petroglyphs and evidence of Pleistocene mammals near a volcanic cone. Our campsite commanded a view across the crater to the Riley Peaks, three high points in the Potrillo Mountains, one of several desert ranges in the Monument. The site had clearly been enjoyed by ORV users, and we spoke with two friendly guys from El Paso in a side-by-side when they stopped to enjoy the view. They were originally from Quebec, and it was surprising to hear French so close to the Mexican border.

Ellen with our friends Steve and Beth Buskirk on the rim of the Kilbourne Hole in the Organ Peaks-Desert Mountains National Monument. February 2025.

Earlier in February, we camped with our Laramie friend, Ed Sherline, in the Uva Mountains near the end of his bikepacking trip around the Desert Peaks. He'd covered sixty miles a day for five days circumnavigating much of the Monument and was feeling (and looking) a little grizzled when we met him on his last night. It was cold at night, but sunrise behind the Organs merited an early wake-up to enjoy layers of mountains and haze in the morning light. 

The Organ Mountains at sunrise taken from a camp in the Uva Mountains.

Those are just three of many experiences I had on public lands in February. My life and the lives of many of my friends have been enriched by these lands for well over a half century. Going back further, my father's family loved the West, and tales of their trips from Dearborn, Michigan to the Tetons in the 1940s drew me to them starting in the late-1970s, changing the course of my life. How many American family histories have been influenced by our federal lands? How many of our lives have been changed?

My father, Ed, and his mother, Nelle, on a trip west from Michigan in the 1940s to visit Grand Teton National Park, at that time less than twenty years old. The photo was probably taken by my grandfather, Ken.

In the U.S. today, few issues are nonpartisan, but protection of public lands unites people from across the political spectrum. The freedom to vacation in National Parks, explore National Monuments, hunt and fish in National Forests, birdwatch in Wildlife Refuges, or wander through remote BLM lands is fundamental to our way of life, yet we win public land battles, never the war. Who are the legislators braying loudly for the sale or transfer of federal (our) lands even while their constituents (we) object?

Ultimately, they are driven by special interests that benefit from reduced regulations so that they can more easily exploit our lands for their profit, meaning that it’s worth their while to contribute campaign funds and pay lobbyists. Oil and gas, mining, timber, and large corporate agricultural interests profit while the rest of us stand to lose our heritage, our primary means of recreation, and our avenue for enjoying the open spaces about which Westerners, including many of those trying to take them away, wax poetic with stories of free-roaming cowboys and Big Sky Country. 

In 2024, Utah filed a lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court that would have required the federal government to sell or “dispose of” more than 18 million acres of our public lands in Utah despite Utah’s agreement upon being granted statehood to “forever disclaim all right and title” to federal public lands. Twelve states supported this attempt even in the face of broad opposition by the public, but many did not. Martin Heinrich, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico, where I live now, stood against this, declaring, "We must stand united against this un-American land grab to ensure that our public lands remain accessible and protected for future generations. Our public lands are not for sale. Full stop." Thankfully, early this year, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, a battle won while the war continues.

Ellen and our friend, Bay, admiring pictographs in the Bears' Ears National Monument established by Obama, shrunk by Trump, re-grown by Biden, and now vulnerable again. Of course, before Europeans, all lands in N. America were public. Cultural resources like these pictographs deserve to remain protected.

The Wyoming legislature was one of the supporters of Utah’s suit. I lived in Wyoming for nearly 45 years and spent countless weeks in its spectacular public lands along with many of my fellow Wyomingites of all political stripes. Recently, Wyoming legislators tried to pass a resolution transferring much of the federal land in Wyoming to the State. Fortunately, this resolution was defeated even in one of the reddest states in the U.S. underlining bipartisan support for protection of public land. Other efforts in Wyoming this year attempted to limit the right of private landowners to transfer land or land rights to the federal government. Many supporters of these measures in the Wyoming House are members of the Freedom Caucus. WTF?

Sunrise in the Honeycomb Buttes--BLM land in Wyoming's Red Desert. 2013.

Public lands continue to be threatened. NPS, BLM, USFS, and U.S. FWS employees are being fired, National Monument boundaries are in jeopardy, and special interests advocate for sale or transfer of our land. Many across our political spectrum are fighting these threats, but many others are complicit, and the war is never won. We can help by writing letters, attending rallies, donating funds, volunteering, and voting. Don’t let the few take away or degrade lands that belong to us all.

Gated and posted private ranchland adjacent to the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. Private landowners have the right to keep people off of their land, but we don't want our public lands to become private and locked away from us.

Guadalupe Mountains, Texas and New Mexico

Our Lady of Guadalupe on a wall in Oaxaca, Mexico (2007).

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In 1531, a Mexican peasant named Juan Diego and his uncle, Juan Bernardino, reported seeing several apparitions of the Virgin Mary, a.k.a. the Virgin of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Guadalupe, near Mexico City. Subsequently, depictions of the purported traveling virgin became iconic, and innumerable places throughout Mexico and the Southwestern U.S carry her name. On a recent outing, we visited the Guadalupe Mountains of SE New Mexico and West Texas, a National Park and home to Carlsbad Caverns and it’s Brazilian free-tailed bat population, which had already migrated south for the winter when we were there, leaving only its guano behind. Summer visitors can watch thousands of bats emerge from the cave at dusk and spiral into the night sky.

Mid- to late-November is autumn in West Texas, but fall color doesn't come to mind in the desert, so we were surprised to learn that trailheads would likely be packed with leaf-peepers. After the five-hour drive from Silver City, we walked to Smith Spring, a short hike into the foothills from a historic ranch. A ranger told us that autumn foliage at the spring was spectacular despite peaking a week or so earlier, but we were skeptical as we walked across the Chihuahuan desert towards a dry-looking canyon. But inside the canyon, clear pools of water seeping from a sandstone layer beneath limestone cliffs created a wet micro-environment supporting a lush grove of yellow Gambel’s oak, red and yellow bigtooth maple, bright green ferns and grasses, and a few pale yuccas and cacti to remind us that the desert wasn’t far away. It was surprisingly spectacular. 

 

We spent the rest of the week exploring the Guadalupes and Carlsbad Caverns. We hiked up Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas (8,751’), and looked down on a limestone buttress called El Capitan. Larry Scritchfield and I bootlegged a mountain bike ride beneath El Capitan on a rest day during a Hueco Tanks climbing trip sometime in the 1980s or 90s (I can’t remember exactly when) before the Park was so popular (and so well patrolled) and before I had a bike with shocks. Ellen and I hiked into McKittrick Canyon, another autumn color destination where a petroleum geologist named Wallace Pratt built an inviting stone cottage in the 1930s that he later donated to the Park. We climbed the three easiest rock routes in Last Chance Canyon, a limestone gorge north of the Guadalupe Mountains know for harder climbs in steep alcoves. And we hiked 750’ down into the earth through Carlsbad’s natural entrance on the switch-backing asphalt tourist trail. It led us and a bunch of other people, some making videos of every feature with their phones (I pity their friends and families), through a labyrinth of passages and rooms and eventually to the underground restrooms and snack bar (closed) near the elevator that most visitors use to exit the cave. We chose to hike out the way we’d come in and were lucky to have the cavern to ourselves after the last tourist entries at 2:30 p.m. passed us on their way down.

 

We’re told that spring is also lovely in the Guadalupes, with wildflowers and white madrone blossoms set off by the mahogany-brown bark. We'll return, and if we’re lucky, Our Lady of Guadalupe might appear in our latte foam at the Blue House Cafe in Carlsbad if we stop there to for a pastry and a pick-me-up on our way home. 

Smith Spring in Guadalupe National Park. 

Yellow bigtooth maple at Smith Spring.

Fall colors at Smith Spring.

Limestone fins in viewed from the trail up Guadalupe Peak.

El Capitan from the Guadalupe Peak Trail with West Texas stretched out to the south. 

Ellen near the summit on the Guadalupe Peak Trail.

A lone bigtooth maple in McKittrick Canyon.

Looking down into the maw of Carlsbad Caverns from the natural entrance. The trail descends 750 vertical feet into the cavern but doesn't reach the lowest levels.

The Virgin of Guadalupe peers out from a window in Oaxaca, Mexico (2007).