The National Park Service, together with the Colorado state government, has launched a survey of the cultural and natural resources in the Hispanic region of southern Colorado with an eye toward the possible creation of a national park in the area.
The study will be carried out in the San Luis Valley and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a region that was Mexican territory until the mid-19th century.
The study will concentrate on an area that contains Colorado’s oldest settlement founded by non-Native American people.
This is also a zone that functions as a corridor for animals that migrate annually between northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, according to a preliminary report by the Department of the Interior.
The same document, the “San Luis Valley and Central Sangre de Cristo Mountains Reconnaissance Survey Report,” says that in the future the region could be made into a national park or be protected in some other way.
The report asks Congress to authorize the funds necessary to continue the study and to protect the cultural and natural resources of southern Colorado. It also requests that a conservation corridor be created that includes both public and private lands, and that the historic sites in the region be identified.
The first Hispanic colonists reached the region in the 1600s, and due to the geographical isolation of the area, 35 percent of the population in the San Luis Valley still speak a form of 17th-century Spanish.
The historical and natural attractions could be used to attract tourism, which in turn would provide a needed boost to the economy of the San Luis Valley and surrounding areas, one of the poorest corners of Colorado, according to the report.
“The San Luis Valley has been home to a variety of cultures dating back 11,000 years and represents the northernmost expansion of the Spanish colonial frontier in the region,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a native of the region, said.
“The people who settled here helped build America, and their cultural and historic contributions are an important chapter in the story of our nation that should be preserved and told to future generations,” he said.
For his part, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper recalled that the San Luis Valley was the place where water-use rights were first awarded and that many of the irrigation canals built almost two centuries ago are still in operation.
For that reason, he said, the Colorado state government will collaborate with the Department of the Interior in “finding ways to protect and promote” the region and its heritage.