This column is part four of a series on public lands in Texas.
Let’s talk about how the Davis Mountains should have been a national park.
It’s a fair conversation to have, given the first of such talk dates back about 100 years ago, and the idea was enthusiastically promoted by various individuals and organizations. And talk of a national park in Texas’ largest mountain range resurfaced as recently as the late 1980s.
To put the Davis Mountains in context, Far West Texas holds three spectacular sky islands — mountain ranges that rise starkly above the desert — holding forested peaks, cooler temperatures, and wetter environments. Two of these sky islands are in national parks. One is not.
Geographically, the Davis range sits squarely in the middle of our state’s two national parks; Guadalupe Mountains National Park sits 100 miles to the north, and Big Bend National Park sits 100 miles to the south. The Davis Mountains, I believe, are the missing link between our two national parks.
About four years ago during a Texas Master Naturalist training, along with several others, I scrambled to the top of Baldy Peak on Mount Livermore (8378’), the highest point in the Davis range and the fifth highest peak in Texas. It was a deep blue sky October day with hardly any haze. I’d brought my binoculars with me, and I wanted to see just how far the visibility was that day. I scanned the horizon to the north. Much to my surprise, I could make out the sheer face of El Capitan, the unmistakable vertical prominence of limestone at the southern point of the Guadalupe Mountains some 100 miles away, with Guadalupe Peak rising up just behind it. It was unmistakable. I was stunned.
And then I turned my binoculars south. And sure enough, I could make out the skyline of the Chisos Mountains, with their high point of Emory Peak and the squared-off block of Casa Grande another 100 miles away. I was blown away. Standing atop the central sky island mountain range of Far West Texas, I could see the sky islands of our two national parks from this vista.
And I couldn’t help but think, Why are those two mountain ranges in national parks, but the one I’m standing on is not?
Well, it’s a long and complicated story, but it’s not for a lack of local vision or effort.
In the 1920s, as the automobile began taking a growing number of Americans beyond the reaches of railroads, access to the American West began spreading. As “summer swallows” began arriving from big Texas cities to enjoy the cooler summers in Fort Davis, business-minded park boosters in town began to see the potential for their mile-high mountain region as a place of recreational value. As the National Park Service began to take root particularly in western states, several efforts were undertaken to promote and create a large park of some kind in the Davis Mountains. But in terms of public land, the Indian Lodge (which now sits within Davis Mountains State Park) and later Fort Davis National Historic Site would be about as good as it would get.
In the early 1930s, during the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the presidency, and with a genius vision his administration began implementing New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps. This program put unemployed men to work creating, among other important public conservation works, park infrastructure. As word spread that Fort Davis was getting a CCC company, park boosters in Fort Davis arranged for the donation of land from a few local ranching families, and a beautiful tract of 2000+ acres would soon host the Indian Lodge, a full-service adobe hotel nestled in the beautiful Keesey Canyon. But that slice was destined to be no more than a small state park just outside of town.
Beginning as far back as 1921, civic officials, bankers, merchants, ranchers, boosters, chambers of commerce, state senators, representatives, congressional leaders, park officials and many others across the country petitioned state and federal governments for the designation of a large park in the Davis Mountains.
While the Indian Lodge was under construction in 1934, Roger Toll, a former superintendent of Rocky Mountains National Park, came for a visit to Far West Texas. Toll had become an expert visionary for potential national park sites, but he held high standards for areas that deserved serious consideration. Of the 129 sites he surveyed, few met his criteria. After his visit to the Davis Mountains he came away somewhat unimpressed, concluding that the area had pastoral beauty, but nothing that could compare with what he managed in Colorado. Thankfully, at least, his prior stop in the Big Bend did catch his attention.
Fair enough. No Davis Mountains National Park this time. But how much of the range did Toll actually see in 1934? Keep in mind that his visit came more than a decade before the scenic loop had been constructed. Did he take in the expansive views from the 8,000-foot mountain tops of Baldy Peak and nearby Mescalero Peak? Did he see the iconic Sawtooth Mountain jutting out of the western edge of the range? Did he visit the stunning scale and scenery of upper Madera Canyon, one of the deepest canyons in the state? Did he drive the winding road leaving Fort Davis through Limpia Canyon toward Wild Rose Pass, which no doubt has the feel of a national park drive? Did he explore the lush forested canyons of what would later become a scout ranch?
Perhaps I’m a bit biased. But let’s say the Davis Mountains don’t score a perfect ten on the grandeur scale. Still, they hold very important and highly fragile resources that more than make up for any “monumentalist” shortcomings — resources worthy of federal conservation. Consider the dark skies of the Davis range, some of the darkest in the country, making the perfect home for the McDonald Observatory. Consider that the mountains historically held the highest density of black bears in the state, and over the past decade they’ve started a comeback. Consider the 400 bird species that have been identified in Jeff Davis County, including 15 species of hummingbirds. Consider the archaeological resources including a massive cache of ritually broken arrow points found on Baldy Peak and a 17-foot tall pictograph panel in a shelter near Madera Canyon. Consider the deepest underwater cave in the U.S. on the northern edge of the range. Consider the regionally endangered ponderosa pines, including the biggest one in Texas. And consider the groves of quaking aspen, an even more rare sight in our state. Those considerations are just a start. In their resources, the Davis Mountains are a singular place.
The fact that several of these remarkable resources have been mostly undisturbed, and that large swaths of ranchland are still intact, is due largely to the legacy ranching families who have poured their lives into this land for well over a century. Still, as Texas’ population booms and property taxes continue to rise and land changes hands from one generation to the next, in many areas of the Davis range, the threats of continued land fragmentation and development persist.
It was with these concerns that in the late 1980s a group of ranchers from the Davis Mountains collectively approached their U.S. Representative, Ron Coleman of El Paso, with the idea of selling their ranchland to the Department of Interior, to be kept intact and undeveloped for good. We’ll get to that chapter next time.
Until then friends, keep walking on the wild side wherever you can.