Jemez Mountains: A Cultural and Natural History

Winner of the 2025 Southwest Book Award

The Jemez Mountains are a quintessential New Mexico landscape. For centuries, Pueblo, Spanish, and Anglo cultures have mixed and melded here. Many ancient villages are scattered across the mesas and in the canyons below the Valles Caldera, the crater of a giant, slumbering volcano. The rocks and trees of this landscape tell tales of eruptions, lava flows, droughts, floods, forest fires, and hot springs damming a river. Stories abound of battles for land and water between conquistadores, pueblos, and priests, and of farming and sheep herding disrupted by raiders and rustlers. In the modern era, forest rangers, scientists, and hippies have played an important role in shaping the area.

In forty brief chapters, this book recounts some of these fascinating stories, accompanied by more than a hundred photographs, maps, and drawings. Matched photographs of the same views taken up to 150 years apart attest to striking change and apparent stasis. Major alterations have occurred in some places over the past two centuries due to human activity, and increasing climate change threatens further transformation.

For those new to the Jemez Mountains, these stories and images will provide an introduction to the cultural and natural history of the area. Residents and long-time aficionados of the Jemez will find both familiar and surprising stories and will gain a renewed sense of this magnificent place.