Political Quotes

“today I join Senator Bingaman in introducing a bill to designate the Valles Caldera National Preserve as a unit of the National Park System. Known as the Valle Grande, this icon of the Jemez Mountains is one of the largest volcanic calderas in the world. The vast grass-filled valleys, forested hillsides, and numerous volcanic peaks make the Valles Caldera a treasure to New Mexico, and a landscape of national significance millions of years in the making. Volcanic activity began in the Jemez Mountains about 10 million years ago. This activity reached a climax about 1.5 million years ago with a series of explosive rhyolitic eruptions that dropped hundreds of meters of volcanic ash for miles surrounding the caldera, and gave the surrounding area its distinctive landscapes of pink and white tuff overlaying the black basalts of the Rio Grande Rift. In the millennia following the Caldera's explosive creation, natural processes of erosion and weathering carved vibrant canyons and left pinion topped mesa stretching like fingers away from the massive caldera. As the great valley was drained of magma, and later a caldera lake, it filled with the diversity of plants and wildlife that makes the area so valuable to biologists and ecologists today.”