The leopold atlas

Aldo Leopold's Southwest

Although Aldo Leopold lived and worked for most of his life in the much less wild Midwest, his early career in the forests and rangelands of Arizona and New Mexico remained firmly in his mind, influencing much of his later thought and writings on subjects from soil erosion to ethics. His exhilarating expeditions and haunting mistakes as a young forester informed the trajectory of his thinking, and it was often with humility that he looked back on his own actions. At the time, for example, killing predators was the standard rule, and Leopold was as effective a proponent of the idea as anybody. In his essay “Thinking Like a Mountain,” he tells of shooting a wolf and seeing the “green fire” go out in her eyes as she died. By the time he wrote the essay in 1944, Leopold had some thirty years of hindsight, and realized that his early beliefs about the role of predators represented a narrow understanding of how ecological systems function. He recounts the story as a metaphor for the transformation in his internal ecological understanding and conscience.

Energetic and impressionable, Leopold spent the early years of his adulthood riding horseback through the wild backcountry of the National Forests, falling in love in the Spanish colonial city of Santa Fe, and rising quickly through the ranks of the fledgling Forest Service. It was an exhilarating time for work and play, and Leopold boldly embraced the challenges the Southwest handed him.

Arizona

Springerville and the Apache

Ancient cinder cones rise above rangeland outside of Springerville, Arizona. Photo by Elaine Hyde.

After his graduation from Yale in 1909, young Aldo boarded a westbound train that would take him to his first job: forest assistant on the newly-formed Apache National Forest. After a brief orientation at the District 3 headquarters in Albuquerque, Leopold took the train on to Holbrook, Arizona, the closest stop to his new post. There he hired a stagecoach for the last leg of the trip—a bumpy, two-day ride to Springerville, at the foot of Escudilla Mountain. Fresh out of college on the East Coast, Leopold was green in the ways of the West and its expansive landscapes. After only a week of training, he was assigned to lead a reconnaissance crew in the Blue Range of the Apache. It was a disastrous mission for Aldo: his egotism and inexperience earned him the disrespect of his crew, his report was fraught with errors, and he was later brought under investigation for mismanagement. It was determined that, although the mission had been inefficiently conducted, Leopold’s behavior was not poor enough to merit dismissal. He was given another chance in his second summer on the job and, learning from his mistakes, proved himself to be both a capable forester and a natural leader.

Colorado River Delta

In 1922, the year after Leopold published an article recommending a national system of wilderness protection, he and his brother Carl went on a wilderness adventure of their own. They left from southwestern Arizona and paddled down the Colorado River into Mexico where it emptied into the Gulf of California. The “gentlemen-adventurers,” as Aldo playfully called themselves in his journal account, glided through the green lagoons of the labyrinthine Colorado delta, luxuriating in the unexpected abundance of the wilderness. They hunted ducks and quail grown fat on the bountiful food of the delta, cooking at night over fragrant mesquite wood fires. Leopold wrote later that he would never return to the region because he did not want to spoil the perfect memory of the wild country he found on his “Voyage of Discovery.”

The Kaibab Plateau

Nowhere were the problems caused by early Forest Service predator eradication policies more in evidence than on the Kaibab Plateau north of the Grand Canyon. Deer hunting had been prohibited on the Kaibab with its incorporation into the Grand Canyon Game Preserve in 1905. As government hunters cleansed the range of wolves, mountain lions, and other predators, the size of the mule deer herds exploded. Overpopulation of deer was an almost unknown concern in a time and place where much effort was focused on retaining game populations, but as foresters began to notice the damage to the forests and rangeland vegetation, the Kaibab quickly became a case study of game mismanagement. Its stark example encouraged Leopold to question his previous position on killing “vermin,” and to begin to formulate ideas on the role of predators in a healthy landscape.

The historic Saint Francis Cathedral, where Aldo and Estella were married in 1912, can still be visited in downtown Santa Fe. Photo by Curt Meine.

New Mexico

From the Apache, Leopold was transferred to the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico in the spring of 1911. He was appointed deputy supervisor, rising quickly through the Forest Service ranks. In addition to advancing his career, moving to New Mexico allowed him to begin courting his future wife, Estella Bergere.

Santa Fe

In the early 1900s Santa Fe was the social and cultural center of the Southwest. Even more enticing for Aldo, it was home to the Bergere family, whose lovely daughters had captured the fancy of many a New Mexico bachelor. After his first visit to Santa Fe, Aldo found excuses for several subsequent trips to visit Miss Estella, who singularly held his attention. In between visits, he courted her by letters, and in August 1911, traveled to Santa Fe again to ask for her hand. After an initial hesitation, she agreed and a little over a year later they were married at the historic Saint Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe.

Tres Piedras

Together, Leopold and Forest Supervisor Harry C. Hall decided to move the Carson Forest headquarters from Antonito, near the Colorado border, to Tres Piedras. More central to the forest, Tres Piedras had the added benefit for Aldo of being closer to Santa Fe and Estella. Just the next year, Hall left for another post and Leopold was officially named Forest Supervisor, the first of his Yale class to hold such a position. The Forest Service provided funds to build a new supervisor’s house on the Carson at Tres Piedras. Aldo drew up the blue prints—a simple house with a splendid fireplace, facing east toward the Sangre de Cristo mountains—and jointly he and Estella decided to call it “Mia Casita.” It would be their home for only six months before Aldo contracted acute nephritis, a serious kidney condition, and would have to spend months recovering, first in Santa Fe, and then back home in Burlington, Iowa.

Albuquerque

The Leopolds moved to Albuquerque in 1914, and Aldo assumed a position in the District 3 Office of Grazing. He stayed there only nine months before taking on a new project: working on the Forest Service’s nascent recreation, publicity, and fish and game programs. His new personal and professional interest in game management led him to found the Albuquerque Game Protective Association, followed by several other GPAs around the state. When he could afford to, Aldo built a house on 14th Street for his growing family. In 1919, he was made Chief of Operations for the Forest Service’s District 3, a position he held for five years before moving his family to Madison, Wisconsin.

Leopold's "Mia Casita," overlooking the Sangre de Cristo mountains, still stands today. The house has recently been restored by the Forest Service. Photo by Curt Meine.

The Gila Wilderness

His work and travel throughout the southwest led Leopold to advance the idea of wilderness preservation. The nation was just reaching a point, he argued, where running out of wildlands, previously unimaginable, was becoming possible. In 1921, he published an article defending America’s need for wilderness. He delineated a list of criteria for wilderness areas—namely “a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks’ pack trip, and devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man”—and suggested a number of places that would meet these requirements. Of all the areas he considered of sufficient size, only three were completely undisturbed by roads and trails; and, of these, he felt the headwaters of the Gila River to be the most attractive and the least conducive to development. The Gila’s natural communities remained relatively intact, there had been only light grazing pressure, and he felt setting it aside would not create undue economic loss. In 1922, he submitted an official proposal to his Forest Service colleagues to manage a large portion of the Gila National Forest as a Wilderness Area. His proposal was accepted in 1924 and the Gila Wilderness thus become the nation’s first such federally designated area.