A New Mexico property with a storied history is about to get new owners

A New Mexico property with a storied history is about to get new owners.

The Nature Conservancy has entered into an agreement to purchase the Dawson Elk Valley Ranch in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and the Flower Hill Institute, a Jemez Pueblo-based nonprofit dedicated to the cultural preservation of tribal history.

The planned acquisition of the Colfax County ranch was announced last month in conjunction with the award of $50 million by the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program to the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department for what’s being called the Vermejo River Watershed Conservation Project.

The first part of the deal is expected to close in March.

“Large-scale conservation, restoration and land stewardship opportunities like this are important for our state,” said EMNRD Secretary-designate Melanie Kenderdine in a statement “The purchase and protection of the Vermejo watershed helps preserve this beautiful landscape and support the people who depend on it.”

Rich history

The private ranch, located roughly 30 miles southwest of Raton, was home in the first half of the 1900s to the coal town of Dawson, one of the largest company-owned towns in the Southwest and the birthplace of American labor icon Dolores Huerta.

During its heyday, Phelps, Dodge & Co. operated 10 mines and managed a model community of 6,000 that featured a 1,000-seat opera house, three-story mercantile store, state-of-the-art hospital, hotel, four schools, two churches and a golf course.

Tragically, Dawson also was the site of two of the country’s worst mine disasters. The first, in 1913, claimed the lives of 263 men and ranks as the second deadliest in U.S. history. A mine explosion a decade later killed another 120 men.

Today, all that remains open to the public is historic Dawson Cemetery, where a sea of white iron crosses memorializes the nearly 400 miners killed in the two explosions. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

Next steps

The Nature Conservancy, a global nonprofit environmental organization, plans to purchase the 50,039-acre ranch for an undisclosed amount from the Colfax Land & Cattle Co. LLC, which acquired the property from the Phelps Dodge Corp. in May 2002.

Colfax Land & Cattle is owned by tobacco billionaire Brad Kelley, the 12th-largest private landholder in the U.S., according to the Land Report. The Dawson ranch, which abuts Ted Turner’s 550,000-acre Vermejo Park Ranch, has been on the market since early 2020 with a listing price of $96 million.

After the purchase, The Nature Conservancy intends to transfer roughly 32,500 acres of prime timberland to the state to co-manage with its yet-to-be-determined tribal partners. The remaining 17,000-acre parcel would remain in conservation until a similar co-management plan is in place.

The ranch consists of thousands of acres of cottonwood, piñon-juniper, and ponderosa pine forests, as well as 11 miles of the Vermejo River, a major tributary of the Canadian River that supplies drinking water to 750,000 people in four states. It is also home to an abundance of wildlife, including antelope, bear, deer, elk, mountain lion and turkey.

Brad Cory, the principal project manager for The Nature Conservancy on the Dawson acquisition, said his organization first approached the Mirr Ranch Group, the Denver-based broker for the ranch, after identifying a potential funding source. The first visit to the site occurred last summer.

Dawson reunions

The expected sale is of particular importance to the Dawson New Mexico Association, a nonprofit organization based in Raton that maintains the cemetery and organizes a reunion every other Labor Day weekend on the old townsite.

The reunions, which began shortly after the town closed in 1950, have been taking place on the Dawson ranch since the early 1980s with the permission of its owner. Some 450 people from across the country attended last year’s reunion, including Huerta and members of her family.

Leaders have voiced concerns in the past over the future of the reunions should they have to be moved to a new location. The next one is tentatively scheduled for Labor Day weekend 2026.

Cory said that while he can’t speak to the long-term management of the property, The Nature Conservancy has no plans to restrict access to the cemetery.

Ditto for the reunions.

“We are aware of the gatherings, and the current ranch manager has shared with me some really moving experiences he has had at past reunions,” Cory said in an email. “While I again cannot speak to the long-term management of the property, I can say that at this time TNC has no plans to restrict access to future gatherings.”

That was music to the ears of Joe Bacca, longtime president of the Dawson New Mexico Association, whose family has played a major role over the years in maintaining the cemetery and organizing the every-other-year reunions. He said the association is looking forward to working with the new owners once the sale is complete.

Native influence

Roger Fragua, co-founder and executive director of the Flower Hill Institute, said it’s too soon to speak about the future of the property, given the sale has yet to become official.

But in a statement issued at the time of the announcement, Fragua called it “a truly historic moment.”

Long before Dawson became a coal town in the early 1900s, Colfax County was home to several Native American tribes, including the Jicarilla Apache. Today, the Jicarilla Apache Nation is one of 23 federally recognized tribes in the state, whose reservation of roughly 3,000 inhabitants is located in north-central New Mexico near the Colorado border.

“This project will create opportunities for participating tribes to reconnect with each other, reconnect with ancestral land, and perhaps most importantly,” he said, “strengthen the connections between themselves and microbes, pollinators, finned, winged and four-legged beings.”

Nick Pappas is a former city editor at the Albuquerque Journal. His book, “Crosses of Iron: The Tragic Story of Dawson, New Mexico, and Its Twin Mining Disasters,” was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2023.