GEOLOGY ROCKS
Pecos National Historical Park offers walk and talk about the area’s natural features
With a populated history that dates back thousands of years, the area within the Pecos National Historical Park is a limitless wonder and a learning opportunity beyond compare.
Retired geologist Laura Reich enriches that opportunity by leading monthly instructional hikes during which she brings the rich landscape and culture alive.
“We rewind our minds to the time before Spanish settlement and learn about uses of local rocks, land, topography, and natural resources,” she said in a March 2020 interview. “Plus basic geological history of past and present mountains, creation of sedimentary rock layers, and recent erosion that formed the upper Pecos River Valley.”
Reich’s contribution as a volunteer is an important addition to the park’s offerings, said Becky Latanich, chief of interpretation.
“She’s bringing a really long and important background in geology to park visitors,” she said of Reich. “Something that is kind of unique. She brings an interesting perspective about geology impacting and a direct cause of history. Certain things that happened because of the geology. She talks about all of the different aspects of how geology touched history here.”
With its consistent and abundant water, the area has long been home to natives. But likewise, its funneling canyons made it a ripe spot for the Civil War Battle of Glorieta Pass.
“It’s important for people to understand the geology here and it is not a topic we spent as much time on in general,” Latanich said. “(The) park has well-documented history and we spend a lot of time talking about all of it, but the foundation on which history is built is not the regular staff’s strongest suit. So Laura brings that perspective.”
Reich is a retired geophysicist from the energy industry in Houston, Texas, and in 2018 began giving guided talks around the park.
The hike is generally an easy stroll of just over a mile, usually taking about 75 minutes one way.
Billed as “Geologic Crossroads at Pecos Pueblo,” Reich unveils what makes the area so special.
“You have the headwaters of the Pecos River and this beautiful valley with the river coming out of the mountains,” Reich said. “It’s a big valley, 25-to-30-square miles. And people don’t realize this, but we have three miles of trout fishing within the park. And then you have Glorieta Mesa, or Rowe Mesa, as it is also known as. It’s a beautiful mesa, with layered rocks and the river valley, and I wanted to bring the geological element to it. Let’s add a little nature to all of this.
The ancestral Rocky Mountains eventually eroded about 300 million years ago, leaving behind the vivid white, yellow and red layers of rocks on Glorieta Mesa of sandstone and siltstone.
Then, some 50 million years ago, the modern Rocky Mountains uplifted and the region is now on the border of three physiographic regions — the foot of the Rockies; the Rio Grande rift that splits New Mexico; and the interior plains that fan out to West Texas and Oklahoma.
“Since the Pecos sits at the junction of three geological provinces, what comes out of that is a lot of diversity,” Reich said. “Right now, there is a thousand feet of elevation change, so you have different plants, different soils.”
The landscape also was a migration route for animals and people for millennia.
“The Pecos people were middlemen with a complex and diverse community,” she said. “They would trade seashells from the west and buffalo-type things from the Great Plains. In turn, they provided corn, beans and squash. While agrarian, they were able to build their pueblo and live together in a large community.”