The striking rock formations known as Tent Rocks closed like most sites during the pandemic. But this national monument, close to Cochiti Pueblo, did not reopen. Now, after years of negotiations between the Bureau of Land Management and the tribe, a new way of visiting begins Thursday.
The Kasha-Katuwe (white rocks, in the Keres Indigenous language) Tent Rocks National Monument was designated in 2001, for its, "geologic processes, biologic and cultural values," said Melanie Barnes, BLM director for New Mexico.
The monument is about 4,000 acres of rocks between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
"Very tall, tent shaped cones, and then also striped, kind of different colors of beige and brown," she said. And people love to visit them.
A visitor plan from 1997 estimated about 70,000 visitors a year, but before the pandemic about twice that many were showing up.
"We had long lines of potentially over an hour of people waiting to get in," said Barnes.
The trails were being eroded. Plus, in the village of Cochiti Pueblo, population about 800, people were fed up.
"The grounds between here are Pueblo all the way up to the monument, are all sacred lands, and have different meanings," said Cochiti Lieutenant-Governor Jude Suina.
But some visitors would park on the side of the road and hike around those sacred lands. Others would ignore signs saying that photographs were forbidden.
"We get calls. Oh, here, there's people driving over here, doing this whatnot, we had a lot of that," said Suina.
Representatives of the BLM and the Pueblo both say it was a good time to renegotiate the arrangements. Neither went into detail about why the process took so long, besides alluding vaguely to red tape, but Barnes explained that now:
"The Pueblo is taking on day-to-day management of the monument on BLM's behalf. It's still BLM public lands, but the Pueblo is operating the visitor operations."
In practical terms, that means booking a spot in advance on Recreation.gov, paying a fee to the BLM of $5 and then another fee of $20 that goes to the Pueblo. Visitors will be guided down to the monument from the visitor center, with a pilot car making sure they stick to the road. Just now, the only available times are Thursday through Monday between November 21 and December 14, except for Thanksgiving.
Suina says his message to visitors is, "we're happy to share, but you know, on mostly our terms."
Those terms seem acceptable so far. The tickets for this first few weeks, which he considers a trial period, are long sold out.
