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Generally, the gloaming is a fine way to end a day around here, as the mellow twilight replaces the harsh sunshine. But it was an annoying kind of light at dusk Tuesday when I ventured over Poncha Pass, bound for the Saguache County Courthouse for a question-and-answer session with Rep. Scott McInnis about converting Great Sand Dunes National Monument into a National Park.
There was just enough illumination to see several structures sprouting on subdivided parcels of what had been the Oxbow Ranch on the south side of the pass.
But it wasn't yet dark enough to go visit the 35+
Acre Ranchettes for Sale
billboards with a chainsaw, so
I contented myself with the hope that some other
public-spirited citizen would pick up the torch, and
continued on to Saguache.
In practical terms, there isn't much difference between a National Monument and a National Park. They're both administered by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior, under the same regulations and policies.
In political terms, a president can create a National Monument from federal land with a mere proclamation, while a National Park requires an act of Congress. We just saw the process at work with Black Canyon of the Gunnison, proclaimed a national monument in 1933 by President Herbert Hoover, and made into a full-fledged national park in 1999 by Congress.
In tourism terms, parks are better attractions than monuments. I have read that in the public mind, a park is a place with lots of things to see and do, where one might stay for two or three days, whereas a monument is probably just some two-acre historic site, barely worth detouring for, let alone considering as a destination.
Thus the same geography, if renamed from monument to park, will attract 10 to 15 percent more tourists, and to be fair, there are people who consider that a benefit.
But there's more than nomenclature involved in this proposed transition from monument to park. The general plan, as presented last month, is for the Nature Conservancy to buy the 100,000-acre Baca Ranch, just north of the current monument boundary, and then sell it to the federal government.
Besides meadows and hayfields, the ranch comprises some sand dunes and some of the sand sheet that feeds the dunes. It also extends well into the Sangre de Cristo Range and includes 14,165-foot Kit Carson Mountain. It also sits atop some of the Closed Basin, a huge aquifer that was at the heart of the AWDI contention a decade ago, and more recently, proposals from Stockman's Water Company to drill wells and sell the water to the Front Range.
Many of the questions Tuesday night came from residents of Crestone and the nearby Baca Grande development, a subdivision with hundreds of lots that was carved out of the Baca Ranch about 30 years ago.
From what I could tell, they were in favor of having the feds buy the Baca Ranch, but they weren't real keen on extending the national park to their doorsteps.
It's easy to understand why -- very few people move to isolated mountain settlements because they want to see more traffic. But if the park expands to the north, a northern portal looks inevitable. It's closer to Colorado's population centers than the current southern portal, and the Park Service needs to attract visitors.
This puts many San Luis Valley residents between a rock and a hard place.
On one hand, they want to keep that water from being
developed and exported. McInnis said no one could offer a
100 percent guarantee, but the water will be better
protected if that land is under federal ownership than it
is now under Colorado water law -- remember, the Colorado
constitution says the right to divert shall never be
denied.
On the other hand, the protection of the water apparently requires a national park, and that's going to mean more traffic and development in general -- those 35-acre ranchettes out on the flats will become more attractive if they're just a few miles from a genuine national park. As for the towns, there aren't many people who will nominate Estes Park or Grand Lake, the portals to Rocky Mountain National Park, as models of good taste and montane serenity.
Some choice. That's probably why the best account of
tourism in the American West, a book by Hal Rothman, is
called Devil's Bargains.
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