New road eases access to area popular with hunters

2.5-mile route reaches onto Gallinas Mesa outside Ocate

A newly opened road will give hunters easier access to about 12,000 acres of northeastern New Mexico.

The State Land Office opened a road last week reaching onto the Gallinas Mesa outside Ocate, an area near the long-contested White Peak, where sportsmen and local landowners have sparred for years over access to state trust land.

“This is going to open up a really big hunting area,” Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn said Friday.

Finished a couple of weeks ago, the 2.5-mile route runs from Mora County Road 10 south into existing ranch and logging roads that have been largely inaccessible to motor vehicles for years.

The road, as well as a new 7-acre campground, will be open during the season to hunters with valid licenses.

The nonprofit Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation covered the cost of the project.

Dunn said his office will also spend about $100,000 on forest and watershed restoration in the area.

The project does not reach into the area around White Peak, but instead into a portion of state trust land to its south that has long been mostly inaccessible to motor vehicles.

That area has been wrapped up in litigation for years.

Former Land Commissioner Pat Lyons proposed trading lands in the area with local ranchers but sportsmen’s groups criticized the deal as a boondoggle designed to benefit private property owners. The New Mexico Supreme Court nixed his plan altogether.

And a rancher is fighting the Mora County government in court for ownership of roads that wend through the area and which hunters have long used to reach the land surrounding White Peak.

Still, sportsmen and their advocates welcome the new road.

Ed Olona, who has campaigned for decades to ensure better access to the area, says the new road could alleviate crowding around White Peak.

And Garrett Vene-Klasen, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and a candidate for land commissioner who has sparred with Dunn, says the new road is an improvement.

“That’s 12,000 acres of land that was not previously accessible,” he said.