San Juan National Forest: The First 100 Years

US Forest Service | Used by Permission

One hundred years ago, on June 3, 1905, Teddy Roosevelt signed a Presidential Proclamation that created almost two million acres of national forest in southwestern Colorado. Known by different names over the past century, including the Montezuma National Forest and Durango National Forest, this federal land is now the San Juan National Forest, more than 120 miles wide and 60 miles long.

Earlier that same year, Roosevelt had transferred the forest reserves, which were created in 1891, to the Department of Agriculture and created the U.S. Forest Service. Over the years, 156 national forests would be proclaimed, giving birth to a new conservation ethic and a professional workforce to manage 193 million acres of federal land. Until this time, there was little oversight of how the vast public lands in our area should be used.

Forest rangers, mostly local residents, arrived on the scene to set up shop in primitive ranger stations. They rode out on a daily basis to oversee the proper cutting of timber, supervise grazing of livestock, put out fires, survey boundaries, and prevent trespass - among other duties.

Early ranger Ray C. Montgomery of the Bell Ranger District, near present day Rockwood, wrote, "A forest officer can serve the public in a very useful way by constituting himself a sort of 'bureau of information.' He should be a student, a reader, at times on the alert for information that he can pass on to the users and general public that will help them."

Bell was a visionary when he wrote: before 1920, "The use of the national forests as a playground for the public is on the increase and is something for which we must prepare."

Today's San Juan National Forest is that playground for hundreds of thousands who enjoy its beauty and recreational opportunities.

The Weminuche Wilderness, Creating a National Treasure
By B.J. Boucher

We in southwestern Colorado who call the San Juan National Forest our "stomping ground" are fortunate to have three designated wilderness areas nearby - the Lizard Head, South San Juan and Weminuche. Who could have known 100 years ago that it would take an Act of Congress to ensure that parts of our public lands would remain "untrammeled" and uninvaded by motorized traffic? Only John Muir, Bob Marshall, Aldo Leopold, Howard Zahniser, and a handful of dedicated individuals who fought for seven decades after creation of the national forests to insure that wildlands, which were being permanently altered by human activities, would be saved. The National Wilderness Act was passed in 1964 and signed by President Lyndon Johnson after 10 hard years of rewrites and public input.

The Weminuche, a 500,000-acre span of wild mountainous terrain, "is Colorado's largest wilderness, attracting thousands of visitors annually. A December, 1974, editorial in the Durango Herald proclaimed, "The creation of the Weminuche Wilderness Area is an event of great importance to Southwest Colorado and the Four Corners Region. The area will rapidly become a major economic asset to the recreation industry and will doubtlessly someday rival Mesa Verde National Park as an attraction." Those words have proven true, and 35 years later the Weminuche Wilderness is a treasure that belongs to all of us.

Naming Places in the Forest
By Alan Nossaman, retired San Juan County judge and author of Many More Mountains

The naming of places in an area as diverse as the San Juan National Forest can be likened to the maturing of a tree, with succeeding growth rings reflecting cultural progression in the region. At the core are Native American titles such as Weminuche, the name of Colorado's largest designated wilderness area, derived from early Ute bands, and Narraguinnep, the Indian word for "battleground."

The next ring would represent names applied by Spanish influence in the area. Examples are Rio Dolores, for "The River of Sorrows"; La Plata, from the Spanish for "silver"; and Piedra, meaning "rock," a name applied widely but deriving specifically from Spanish recognition of Chimney Rock as a landmark.

A succeeding growth ring could be interpreted as Anglo titles reflecting the character of natural features. Pioneers and early surveyors applied names like Lizard Head, Sharkstooth Peak and the Needle Mountains to some of the areas most striking features. This explains-the abundance of Willow, Baldy and Bear names found among San Juan place names, including Grizzly Peak, named in commemoration of a rheumatic prospector's winning race with a bear down one of its gulches.

The outer layer of growth would come from the naming of natural features by the new western explorers after contemporaries. A profusion of colorful stories exist here, among them Williams Creek, harking back to pioneer guide and trapper "Old Bill" Williams; Windom Peak, named for President James A. Garfield's secretary of the treasury; and McPhee, named for early lumber company owner William P. McPhee. Elbert Creek is among several features bearing the name of Samuel H. Elbert, Colorado's sixth territorial governor and eventual chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. Endlich Mesa was named for Frederick M. Endlich, a leading geologist with the first U.S. Geologic Survey expedition of F.Y. Hayden into this region. .

Some names reflect an even more contemporary view, such as the Peak One and Peak Two terminology applied to various summits in the Needle Mountains in an attempt to keep them straight - these titles number all the way through Peak Fourteen. Yet other names are subtly disappearing from maps, such as Parrott Peak, named after San Francisco banker Tibercio Parrott, a heavy investor in the early prospecting in La Plata Canyon and namesake of the now vanished Parrott City, once the county seat of La Plata County. Another is Debs, the name applied to a ranching community on the East Fork of the Piedra River and west of Pagosa Peak. This community was named after socialist presidential candidate Eugene Y. Debs, and it even had a post office of that name from 1915 to 1925.

A further study of the San Juan National Forest place names will give you an interesting view of the history and cultural development of our region and nation.