Ortiz Mountains

On Saturday we drove down to the Ortiz Mountains about a half hour south of Santa Fe. We were visiting a preserve owned by the County but operated by the Santa Fe Botanic Garden. It was given to the botanic garden by a gold mining company. There has been gold mining in the mountains since the mid 1800s. In one photo you can see an old mine carved into the ground. In that era, the rocks with gold were ground by horses turning a simple rock mill. The mill had a flat circular iron pan on the bottom filled with ordinary flat rocks and rocks hung from a bar overhead. The gold dust would filter down between the rocks on the bottom. There was lots of old mining trash around - tin cans, broken glass and ceramic bits. They worked the mine in the winter when snow could provide the water needed in mining. In another photo you can see a restored modern mine with a tailing pond on the left side. The whole middle section of a mountain is missing in the center of the photo and there is a 600 foot deep pit there that you can't see. It is slowly filling with water. The area around the mine has been planted with grasses and trees. The restoration was only acheived after a lawsuit overturned an 1872 state law that exempted mining companies from having to do any cleanup after mining. On the other side of the mountain the same mining company has finally secured both the mineral and water rights to a mine that will probably open soon. They originally had the mineral rights, but when the mine filled with water, they didn't have the water rights to allow them to pump it out!

To get to the Botanic Garden's property we got in the docent's 4 wheel drive vehicles and climbed about 2 miles up a very steep and rocky road. Docent training involves mostly safety and emergency training as opposed to history and botany! But there were some good botanists among the docents and we saw quite a few interesting plants. Attached are photos of a pink verbena and a native Mahonia (in the barberry family).