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News and Notes

National Park Service "Passport Program"

CARTA learned recently that El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail has been added to the official “Passport Program” administered by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. By purchasing and stamping their “passports” as visitors arrive at each destination along the Trial, the program delivers a fun and challenging way to chart each adventure. Currently, the following sites are participating in the program, with more additions planned: Palace of the Governors, El Rancho de las Golondrinas, Coronado National Monument, Casa San Ysidro (Gutierrez-Minge House), Gutierrez-Hubbell House, Fort Craig National Historic Site, Fort Selden State Monument, Mesilla Plaza-J. Paul Taylor Visitor Center, Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, El Camino Real International Heritage Center, El Paso Museum of History, and Chamizal National Memorial.

Tuition-Free Filmmaking Workshops

In an exciting project that combines camaraderie, site stewardship, Trail preservation, young folks, and filmmaking, the National Park Service is funding CARTA to work with Mikey’s Place students and filmmaker Jason VanCamp (Las Vegas, NV) to digitally document the Jornada del Muerto. The next one-day workshop, on Saturday 27 August, will be held tuition free in order to reach a larger audience. You can register at Mikey’s Place, 3100 Harrelson Street, Las Cruces, 88005, by calling (575) 640-3869, or sending email to mikeysplacenm@aol.com.

Bi-national Cultural Landscapes Documentation Training Program

CARTA has received an important BLM Challenge-Cost-Share grant to develop a Bi-national Cultural Landscapes Documentation Training Program with Mexican and American graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

The first year of this multi-year effort will be used to develop training partnerships among CARTA, federal agencies in the U.S. and Mexico, universities, and landscape documentation experts.

Tentative plans call for a planning workshop 9-10 June 2011 in El Paso. Please watch this space as arrangements develop.

Future Insiders’ Tours in the Works

Members Jim Andress and Tom Harper are working together to plan several additional Insiders’ Tours in the vicinity of the Sevilleta Wildlife Refuge, the Bosque del Apache, and the Armendaris Ranch. Mary Kay Shannon is communicating with private property owners and Richard Wadsworth, author of “The Forgotten Fortress,” to lead a tour to the historic Fort Fillmore site south of Las Cruces. Rob and Rhonda Spence are researching the possibility of an Insiders’ Tour along a Fort Selden–Fort Thorn trajectory. Please stay tuned as plans progress.

BLM ARRA Trails Inventory

Ongoing field inventories of trail settings and visual resources along critical segments of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in New Mexico continue as part of the Bureau of Land Management’s Historic Trails Inventory project.

The nationwide inventory is funded through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). CARTA’s federal BLM partner, Sarah Schlanger (Santa Fe), serves as the national lead for this exciting and proactive endeavor. The principal contractor for the New Mexico effort, Statistical Research, Inc. of Albuquerque (SRI-Inc.) serves as a subcontractor for the Denver-based AECOM consulting firm (www.aecom.com), known for providing international architectural, engineering, and environmental expertise.

SRI, Inc. has completed a review of key observation points along El Camino Real, and has coordinated with the research team of John Roney, Mike Marshall, and Tom Merlan, who recently completed a Multiple Properties Nomination Form and individual National Register of Historic Places nominations for eleven significant segments of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. Continuing SRI, Inc. fieldwork will focus on establishing landscape-setting conditions, assessing current trail conditions, and setting up a visual resource inventory for the segments studied by Roney, Marshall, and Merlan on BLM-managed public lands.

Also as part of the ARRA undertaking, SRI, Inc. will conduct cultural resource inventories, trail condition assessments, and setting inventories for nearly twenty miles of the Old Spanish Trail located on public lands in New Mexico.

Camino Real is a new World Heritage Site

The World Heritage Committee has added Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (Mexico) to the list of World Heritage Sites! The inscribed property consists of 55 sites and five existing World Heritage sites lying along a 1400 km section of this 2600 km route, that extends north from Mexico City to Texas and New Mexico, United States of America.