Gallup Trails, parks appreciated by state

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Independent correspondent

GALLUP — Peter Simon can understand why some people in McKinley may feel neglected by the New Mexico Parks and Wildlife Department.

After all, he said, except for Bluewater Lake, there are no state park facilities in the county.

But Simon was in Gallup Monday — meeting at the Gallup Chamber of Commerce — to tell area residents that his department is there to help out county and local officials in any way possible to promote the area trails system.

In fact, Simon was in Gallup to give an award to Gallup Trails 2010 for their work in improving the area trails system during the past several years. He also presented a token of appreciation to state Rep. Patty Lundstrom for her efforts — along with state Sen. George Munoz — to get legislation passed that would allow the department to do something about land it owns in the western portion of the county that is undeveloped.

The 44 acres are along Interstate Highway 40 at the New Mexico-Arizona border. It’s too small and does not have a reason — such as a famous tree — that would lend itself to being made into a park, so the parks department has to seek legislative authority to do something with it.

The legislation, he said, allows the department to “sell or trade” the land. If it is sold, the money would go to the parks department to use for the benefit of the state’s parks program.

“We have a number of options (for the land),” he said. But the one that seems to be the top choice right now is to trade the land with the state with the parks department getting land state land that is now within the parks system. This would allow the parks department to give the land to the state to develop as it wants. “We have to be sure that the parcels are of equal value,” he said.

The other part of his visit stemmed from something that was left undone in September.

The parks department had an official working for them by the name of Jessica Terrell who was in the process of making major strides in promoting the state’s trail system when she died in a car accident in January 2008. To honor her memory, he department decided to name an award in her honor.

The awards ceremony was held in September, he said, and Gallup Trails 2010 was supposed to be one of two trail systems to be honored at that time — the other one was the Continental Divide Trails Program — but Gallup’s award never happened because no representative of the Gallup program was available to accept the award at that time.

“We were waiting for an appropriate time to give out the award to Gallup.” Simon said and a decision was made to do it at Monday’s meeting.

Bill Siebersma, who is one of the area residents involved in Gallup Trails 2010, accepted the award but said at least 10 other areas residents, including those involved with the Adventure Gallup program and private companies, such as Gamerco Associates, which agreed to allow the trails to go along some of their land, also needed to be honored as well.

So far, more than 40 miles of trails have been developed in the county, Siebersma said, and groups are now working on developing more than 100 more miles, much in the Zuni area, in the next few years.