The Ascent to Sandia Crest

The Rotary Club will take immediate action on the Ellis ranch loop project. The Rotarians reached this decision at their weekly luncheon, held yesterday at the Albarado hotel.

The club's plan is not merely to give Albuquerque a good, short road to the Ellis ranch... They embrace the building of a seventy-mile scenic loop. ¹

Many Western cities are defined, in part, by their mountains. Those moving from town to town often comment on the disorientation, the disruption, caused by a change in the city's relation to the peaks. If you have ever lived in a place with the mountains on the west, and then a place with the mountains on the east, you will know what I mean. We get used to living in the shadows of mountains.

One of the appeals of mountains, perhaps the source of their mysticism, is inaccessibility. Despite their close proximity to Albuquerque, steep slopes and difficult terrain kept the Sandias a world apart from the city, even to this day. Yet we have always been driven to climb, to ascend to the summit.

Humans climb mountains not only as a matter of individual achievement, but also as a matter of infrastructure. Whether the inaccessibility of mountain peaks is a good thing or a bad thing depends on the observer; and even the most challenging mountain ascents are sometimes developed to the scale of an industrial tourism operation.

And somewhere, in between, are the Sandias. Not technically part of the Rocky Mountains but roughly aligned with them, the Sandias lack a clear peak. Instead, the range is an elongated ridge, making up the entire eastern boundary of the city of Albuquerque and extending some distance further north into the Sandia Pueblo. The highest point is at 10,679', relatively modest for the mountain states---but still one of the most prominent in New Mexico, moreso even than the higher-elevation Mt. Taylor and Wheeler Peak.

Today, the Sandias are a major site for recreation. Tourists reach the upper parts of the mountain by one of two means: Sandia Crest Scenic Highway, which climbs the gentler eastern slope of the mountain to the crest itself; or the Sandia Peak Aerial Tramway, which makes a daring ascent from the edge of the city up the western side. Either provides access to an extensive network of trails, as do numerous points in the foothills and along the scenic highway.

Like bagging any peak, these access routes were hard-won. Their present contours---engineering achievements, twists and turns, scars on the landscape---reflect over one hundred years of ambition and conflict. Some of Albuquerque's most prominent figures left their marks on the mountain, as did everyday Burqueños, President Richard M. Nixon, and the slow grind of state and federal bureaucracy. The lay of the land today tells a story about the changing relationship of the city with the mountains, and more broadly of the American public with the wilderness.

It also explains why so many older documents and maps refer to the highway to the crest as a "loop," when it does no such thing. Here's the clickbait headline: Where does the Sandia Loop Highway go? The answer will surprise you.

Exploration of the Sandias by Spanish expeditions were motivated in large part by rumors of great mineral wealth. Certainly there are minerals in the mountains, and the Pueblo people had told the Spanish expeditions coming up the valley of gold and other precious metals, both in the mountains and in the plains beyond them. With the full perspective of history, it seems that these reports were less grounded in fact and more in a well-founded desire to get the Spanish to move on elsewhere. Supposedly several mines were established, but they left little mark on the landscape and their locations are now forgotten.

The Sandias, while rich in scenery, were not rich in gold. For centuries, they remained mostly undeveloped, besides Pueblo settlements in areas such as Tijeras canyon which were later abandoned in large part due to the increasing encroachment of settlers. Just a small number of people, mostly hunters, called the mountains their home. A few mining operations made their way into the mountains during the 19th century, perhaps repeating the mistakes of the Spanish several hundred years before.

It was these mining camps that brought the Ellis family to Albuquerque. They had run a ranch in the eastern plains of New Mexico, but were driven into the city by lack of water. Patriarch George Ellis found work for a fruit distributor, delivering produce to the mining camps in the mountains. Perhaps missing their days out in the country, George took his time as he traveled the canyons and ridges between camps. His wanderings were rewarded when he found Las Huertas Canyon, a narrow slot with a creek, protection from the wind, and what George Ellis himself called "extraordinary beauty."

The Ellis family moved into the canyon as early as 1893, but in 1905 George Ellis filed a land patent for what was, as an outcome of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, frontier up for the taking. Ellis Ranch, as it was called, was indeed extraordinary: one of the most pleasant places in the mountains. But, then, the Ellis family were rather extraordinary as well. Life on the mountainside at 7,600 feet wasn't easy, but they kept cattle, chickens, and a modest farm.

Charlotte Ellis, George's daughter, had not yet a year of education at UNM when they moved out of town and up the slopes on the east side of the ridge. Still, she built a notable career as an amateur botanist. It is because of her efforts that Ellis ranch is often described in terms of its plant life---Charlotte collected specimens of hundreds of plant species, some of them new discoveries, and the ranch is said to have contained examples of every flowering plant known to exist in the mountains.

Plants were not Charlotte's only interest, though. She was apparently a skier, in a time well before skiing was known as a recreational pastime. A photo taken in 1896 shows her in a snow-covered landscape, facing away from the camera. She's looking down the slope, wearing a full dress and a pair of wooden skis. Her pose suggests a certain resolve, the kind you would need to spend the winter high above the nearest towns. It is often captioned as the first photograph of a person skiing in New Mexico. It may be the first photo of a woman skiing at all ².

It also foreshadows the tremendous impact that skiing would have on the mountains and on Albuquerque. We don't know exactly what she was thinking, but what we do know about her suggests that she viewed the mountains much as we do today: for their beauty, their diversity, and for their thrill.

George Ellis had perhaps filed his land patent just in time. The Forest Service had existed for some years but was reorganized under its current name, and as part of the Department of the Interior, in 1905. The forests of the Sandia Mountains have a complicated legal history owing to the interaction of Spanish and Mexican land grants with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the conclusion of the Mexican-American war. You could say that the matter of the forest's legal ownership was not entirely settled until 2004.

None of that stopped President Roosevelt declaring the Sandias part of the Manzano Forest Reserves in 1906. Shortly after, the Forest Reserves became a National Forest and a ranger station was under construction near Tijeras. Paul Ellis, the son of the family, was soon hired on as one of the national forest's first staff; the Ellis Ranch one of the few private parcels within the federal boundaries.

The Forest Service has always served multiple purposes: "Land of Many Uses," as Forest Service signs still proclaim. Principle concerns of the forest service included lumber, cattle and sheep grazing, mining, and hunting. These uses were already widespread at the dawn of the modern Forest Service, so in practice, much of the role of early Forest Rangers was to bring forest users under control. Extensive regulations and rules were backed by a small set of rangers of the "Stetson era," rugged types not unlike the Ellises.

What we don't always picture as a part of that era was recreation. The "crunchy granola" brand of wilderness recreation most widely promoted today is indeed a more modern phenomenon, but forests have been viewed as recreational assets since the dawn of forest management---the form of that recreation has just changed, largely in response to new concepts of environmental stewardship that emphasize preservation over "improvement."

In 1913, George Ellis passed away. After a small ceremony, he was buried in a cemetery established next to his ranch. With George gone, the rest of the Ellis family began to scatter, moving into towns, closer to work. This left the question of the ranch.

By the time of George's death, Ellis Ranch had already become renowned for hospitality. The newspapers of the day recounted some of Albuquerque's finest taking vacations at the Ellis Ranch, a trip that was something of an adventure in the 1900s. It took a few hours, in fine conditions, to make the way up a rough trail to the Ellis homestead. One local businessman, known to newspaper readers as "the bee man," took some pride in having gotten a Ford automobile to within a mile of the site. Even so, the journey was well-agreed to be worthwhile. Las Huertas canyon was beautiful, and the Ellises known to offer fresh produce, spring water, and mountain air---a commodity in increasingly high demand as tuberculosis swept the country.

The reputation of the Ellis ranch for taking visitors explains the Albuquerque Tribune's matter-of-fact statement that the Ellis ranch would likely become a tourist resort, despite the lack of known buyers. At that time, the Forest Service was already in an infrastructure-building mood. La Madera, then one of the larger settlements in the east mountains, had telephone service and the Forest Service was extending the line to the ranch.

Shortly after, the buyers emerged, Raymond Stamm (uncle of the Stamm of Bradbury Stamm Construction) and Jack Sheehan of Albuquerque.

These young men propose to fit up the ranch as a mountain resort, the house being splendidly adapted to a mountain club house, with fine fishing, hunting, and camping facilities all about. ³

One challenge for this ambitious pair was, of course, the road: for the ranch to be the resort they imagined it needed an easier means of access. It was estimated that this effort would only require a few hundred dollars, reworking about three miles of trail between the ranch and a better road to Tijeras.

Even by 1913, an improved road to Ellis Ranch was a recurring theme in the newspapers. George Ellis, before his death, had estimated $500 to improve the road between the ranch and Placitas to passable condition. After his death, the estimate on this longer segment reached the thousands.

Some of the problem was, of course, hubris: the Albuquerque boosters of the day could look at three miles of faint road climbing up and down cabins and call it a few days of work. When these projects went underway, they always took longer and cost more than expected. To be fair, though, they were also fighting a living foe. Thunderstorm downpours and winter snow repeatedly washed out the road in the steeper sections. Reading of road improvement efforts, you get repeated deja vu. They are, in fact, announcing plans to fix the same section of road over and over again---it having always washed out the previous year.

The Stamm-Sheehan resort seems to have been popular, even as the road stayed rough. In September of 1914, the faculty of UNM held what we might now call an "offsite" there. Indeed, during 1914 and 1915 it seemed that practically everybody who was anybody was vacationing at Ellis Ranch. All the while, though, they were still struggling to get there... a situation that the Rotarians resolved to correct.

The road to Ellis Ranch has been known by many names and promoted by many people. The Rotary Club was a powerful force in the Albuquerque of 1916, though, and their proposal seems to have set the pattern for those that followed. The Ellis Ranch Loop Road, as they called it, would span 70 miles from Albuquerque to Albuquerque. The route went through the Tijeras pass, turned north to San Antonito ⁴ and passed Ellis Ranch on the way to La Madera and then Placitas. From there, it went nearly to Bernalillo, meeting the Santa Fe-Albuquerque road that would soon become part of Route 66---until 1937, at least.

A big argument for the loop, besides the fact that it makes the Ellis summer resort more easily accessible, is its scenery.

At the time of the Rotary Club proposal, the region's road map was in some ways familiar, and in some ways rather different. Many of the today's routes were already known but their condition was widely variable. The trip from Albuquerque to Tijeras, which would become the ultimate Route 66 alignment, was already in place. It was shorter in 1913, though, not extending much further east, and far from a highway. There was a rough road north to San Antonito, and there had once been a road further north from there to La Madera, but by 1916 it had been closed where it entered a private land grant.

This is probably the biggest difference from our modern road network: the route through Tijeras Canyon was not used for much other than access to Tijeras, and for much of the era covered in this article the preferred way to negotiate the Sandias and Manzanos was to go around them entirely. This is a good part of the reason for Route 66's original north-south alignment through the Rio Grande Valley, one that added significant mileage but avoided the mountain pass that was slow going in good weather and could be outright impassable in winter.

Similarly, from the north, there was an existing road from Bernalillo through Placitas and into the East Mountains. It was, in fact, the main route used by many of the residents there. It was not an easy route, though, long and prone to washouts.

And while these roads came close to forming a loop, they didn't. A section of about four miles was missing, right in the middle. Ellis Ranch was, of course, somewhere in that in-between.

So, the Rotary Club project was mostly the improvement of existing roads, along with the construction of new road in a couple of areas required to complete the loop around the Sandia range. The Rotarians estimated the cost at $5,000, and the Forest Service offered to pitch in.

Now, we must consider that $5,000 was a significant amount of money in 1916, something around $150,000 today. This inflation calculation probably underestimates the ask, because extensive investment in highway construction was not yet the pillar of American culture that it is today. Still, public enthusiasm for the project was high, and by the end of 1916 Bernalillo County had enacted a tax assessment to to support the road. The state legislature joined on, and with the Forest Service's share the project was fully funded. Construction seems to have began in earnest in 1917, on improvements to the road through Tijeras Pass.

Efforts on the loop road coincided, of course, with work to develop Ellis Ranch as a summer resort. Starting in 1917, regular newspaper ads appear for vacation cabin rentals at Ellis Ranch, with instructions to telephone Hugh Cooper. This High Cooper was Hugh Cooper Jr., son of the Hugh Cooper who was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. Much like George Ellis, Rev. Cooper was a well-known figure around Albuquerque. Given that he officiated the wedding of at least one of Ellis's children, he was presumably friendly with the Ellises as well. The newspapers are not exactly clear on how it came to happen, but Rev. Cooper Sr would soon become much more involved in the ranch: in 1923, he and his sister went in together to buy it.

"We hope to keep this beauty spot of nature, so near our city, from falling into the hands of sports, who will advertise dance pavilions and entertainments of a sordid nature. If our plans mature we hope to make it a place where parents can go with their children and find recreation of an exalted character." ⁵

Rev. Cooper's motivations were, he assured the newspaper, godly rather than pecuniary. The phrase "exalted recreation" was singled out for the headline and is certainly one to remember as you explore the Sandias. Cooper was not, though, immune to the sort of boosterism that so animated the Rotary Club.

"We hope, with the help of the good people of Albuquerque, to make the famous Ellis Ranch a second Estes park."

The 1910s and '20s were boom years in Albuquerque, with a confluence of the railroad shops, the sawmill, and tuberculosis bringing new residents at a fast clip. The population more than doubled from 1900 to 1920, and with the newcomers came urban development. Subdivisions went under construction west of New Town, a skyscraper rose, and car ownership proliferated. The same period, for many of the same reasons, saw the genesis of American tourism. Trains brought visitors from out of town, and cars brought visitors and residents alike out into the surroundings. Boosters, from the city council to the chamber of commerce to a half dozen clubs, all had plans to make the best of it.

There was, to be sure, a certain aspect of keeping up with the joneses. Colorado was building a strong reputation as a tourist destination, and Denver as a beautiful and prosperous city. Arizona and Nevada had not yet gained populous cities, and west Texas was no less sparse than it is now. For the businessmen of Albuquerque, Colorado was the competition... and Colorado was building summer resorts.

The concept of the "summer resort" is mostly forgotten today, but in the 1920s there was little air conditioning and cities were gaining a reputation as crowded and polluted. The spread of Tuberculosis had brought particular attention to "clean, fresh air," and nothing was quite as clean and fresh as a summer day in the mountains. Estes Park, a town in the northern Colorado rockies, had multiple fine hotels by 1910 and attracted the tourism to match.

Further, in 1910, Denver's own boosters (groups like the Real Estate Exchange and the Denver Motor Club) began to acquire land for the Denver Mountain Parks. The beautiful Genesee Park was under construction in 1920, with a lodge and campground. Daniel Park had opened as a scenic drive (or "Auto View"). Plans for Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway, the highest paved road in North America, had been finalized and announced to great fanfare.

To the modern conservationist it seems odd that these plans were so focused on roads, but the automobile was new and exciting and in the West had almost singlehandedly popularized the idea of "wilderness recreation." The mountains were no longer a destination only for the hardiest adventurers, they were also for city dwellers, out for a drive and a picnic. The ideal of natural preservation was a long, winding road with regular scenic pullouts. If the road could access a summer resort, all the better. Denver was doing it, and so Albuquerque would too.

Behind the scenes, the wheels of government had been turning. The Forest Service approved construction through the mountains in 1919, which would "make accessible some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the state, in addition to bringing within easy reach sites for summer homes and temporary camping places." At this point in its history, the Forest Service routinely leased space for the construction of private homes, and a small number were established in the national forest as the road progressed inwards.

Bernalillo County had raised $12,500, the Forest Service committed $25,000, and the state was lobbied for another $12,500. A Forest Service engineer, speaking to the County Commission, noted that the road would provide access to 30 million board feet of lumber. The Forest Service said that construction could be finished by the end of the summer, and in September, the section from Placitas to Ellis Ranch opened to drivers. The road from Ellis Ranch to San Antonito had been surveyed, but work had not yet started.

We should consider again how this historic project relates to the modern roads, because there is a surprise. Today, the primary access from Albuquerque to the eastern slopes of the Sandias is via I-40 to Tijeras, and then NM-14 north through Cedar Crest and to then to San Antonito. There, NM-536 branches to the west, becoming Sandia Crest Scenic Highway.

NM-536 turns into Sandia Crest Scenic Highway, which is actually not a numbered highway at all, at a 90-degree turn by the Balsam Glade picnic area. From the picnic area, a much smaller, rougher dirt road descends to the north: NM-165. Today, NM-165 is a rugged and adventurous route to Placitas, impassable in winter and unfriendly to passenger vehicles.

And yet, in the summer of 1919, it was this route that was made a "first class road" to Ellis Ranch. The former site of Ellis Ranch now has a surprisingly well-paved parking lot off of the dirt NM-165, signed as "Las Huertas Canyon," and a trail continues up the creek through much of what was the summer resort. It took about an hour and a half, the Journal reported, to drive from Albuquerque to Ellis Ranch by this route around the north side. The travel time probably isn't all that much faster today, given the slow going on the dirt road.

In 1920, Bernalillo County ran into some trouble on the project funding. The county's plan to fund much of the project through bonds on the tax assessment was, it turns out, in violation of state law. For accounting reasons, the total sum of the bonds would have to be much lower. The county was effectively out of the project, at least as far as money was concerned.

The Forest Service worked according to its own plans. Construction started on a forest road, what is now NM-536, that would later be home to Tinkertown. In summer of 1922, it reached Sulphur Spring, the first of many recreation sites on its long trip up. Progress was brisk: the newspaper reported that 2.5 miles had been completed, then a few more, then eight. The forest road seems to have gone by different names at different times, and perhaps just depending on who was talking, but as 1922 came to a close the Forest Service named it for the canyon that it followed from San Antonito: Tejano Road.

Tejano Road ended about where the bottom of the ski area is found today, some four miles short of Ellis Ranch. Much of the Ellis Ranch Loop was complete, but it wasn't a loop. Plans had been completed for the final stretch, but it was unclear who would pay for the work---and when. The Journal printed an appeals to finish the project, several times mentioning the importance of a "sky line road."

The sky line road was something of a fad in those days. California and Oregon both had them, and plans were underway in many other parts of the west. A skyline road was what we might now call a scenic byway, but with a particular emphasis on views. Many followed a ridge, right down the center, so that drivers could get a view down both sides. Extensive earth-moving and forestry were sometimes involved, modifying the environment to create these views.

The West had a lead on the idea: it wasn't until 1925 that planning started on the most famous, Skyline Drive of Shenandoah National Park. The 100-mile highway was viewed as a wilderness adventure, but was about as far from our modern conception of wilderness as possible. Extensive clearing, of both trees and residents, were required to manicure its vistas. It was seen as one of the finest examples of American recreation, a model to be followed.

In July of 1923, the Ellis Ranch Loop was considered complete except for the four-mile segment between Tejano Road and Ellis Ranch Road and, oddly enough, the reworking of the road from Placitas to Ellis Ranch---the very one that had been completed in 1922. Road construction in the mountains was a fight against both funding and nature. The road seems to have been minimally improved, to keep the fast schedule and tight budget. During winter, snowfall and then snowmelt would wash parts of the road out. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the road was constantly being repaired and reworked. This probably explains why NM-165, once the principle route up the Sandias, is now so minimally maintained: the state and the Forest Service gave up.

During 1924, the Forest Service closed two miles of the gap and had the other two underway. In a turn of luck for the Albuquerque boosters, the Forest Service also offered to pick up work on the road to Placitas. The entire Ellis Ranch Loop project had become a Forest Service initiative, and they did what they set out to do.

In September 24th of 1924, an Albuquerque man named Arthur Ford set out through Tijeras Canyon with a friend, Mrs. Karskadon. They left Albuquerque at 10 am, finding that the new section connecting Ellis Ranch was not, officially, open; Ford was little discouraged and simply moved the barriers aside. At 11:45 they reached Ellis Ranch. After lunch, they continued northwards, to Placitas, through Bernalillo, and back into town. Ford's odometer measured the trip at 68 miles. The Ellis Ranch Loop was complete.

Imagine a circle approximately 20 miles in diameter.

Then imagine that this circle encloses some of the most beautiful mountain, valley, and mesa scenery in the world.

The city has always existed in tension with the mountains. The Ellis Family, who most famously opened the mountain to visitors, also oversaw a sort of closure to nature. George Ellis was the last person to see a Grizzly Bear in the Sandias. He came across the bear in 1905; he shot it.

From 1916 to 1924, Albuquerque business leaders admired the mountains for their beauty but lamented their inaccessibility. The Sandias could attract visitors from around the nation, they argued, if only you could get to them. Charlotte Ellis would hoof it on foot and on skis, but, then, she was Charlotte.

Then imagine that this circle is bounded by a highway that is traversible every day in the year.

Imagine, within the 70-mile circumference of this circle, near its eastern rim, a cluster of summer houses, supplied with water, light, and other necessaries. Imagine, at various spots within the circle, fine picnic and camping grounds, where people from the hot city may go for a day's outing.

We have always been driven to climb. As soon as it was possible to drive the full loop, to reach Ellis Ranch on an easy road, to take in the "Million Dollar Playground" of the Sandias, the Kiwanis Club formed a committee of business leaders and Forest Service representatives to consider the future of Sandia development.

It was "not only practicable, but highly necessary," they said, to take the next logical step. Ellis Ranch, at 7,500 feet, was only halfway from the city to the crest. A road all the way to the top---from Ellis Ranch to the crest---would complete their vision of the Sandias. "An effort will be made to have work begun as soon as possible."

You may think you are dreaming. And perhaps you are. But some day you will wake up and find the dream come true. ⁶

The Forest Service cleared six miles of steep, tight switchbacks, from the Balsam Glade area just above Ellis Ranch to the crest itself, over 10,500 feet. The New Mexico Highway Department, bolstered by the completion of Route 66, laid a gravel roadbed. Automobiles had become more common, driving a more popular pastime. It didn't take the adventurous Arthur Ford and Mrs. Karskadon to inaugurate the crest spur. On October 10th, 1927, Highway Department officials at the crest counted 110 cars.

Albuquerque had summited the mountain---but the greatest controversy was still to come.